Sarah Dessen

I was so thrilled that I was having a girl, because I just am so girly myself, but I think the teenage years are going to be very interesting.

Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.

I don't live in New York or California. I'm in the grocery store, at the park with my kids, and I'm a normal person. I'm feeding my chickens and agonizing about my next book!

When I was a teen, I was never really into the captain of the football team or the student body president. The guys I liked were quirky and different: They listened to music I'd never heard of, never had lunch or gas money, and could always make you laugh.

Teenagers are a great audience and they are fearless about asking what they want to know.

I think part of the problem sometimes is that there's so much happening in my books, to whittle it down into a single script is hard.

I've been writing, in one way or another, for as long as I can remember.

I think my mother characters have changed a lot since Sasha was born, just because I understand what a hard job it is now, and I'm coming at it from another angle - like you just love and care about this person so much, and just want to protect them from everything.

I really just love to read, period, whether it be books or magazines or the back of the cereal box. It's the one thing I can always count on to calm me down, take me away and inspire me, all at once.

I love writing about the summer between high school and college. It's the last gasp of really being a teen.

I love YA, and it's been a really good fit for me. But at some point, I would like to try something else: a collection of short stories, or writing about something other than high school. A lot has happened to me since I was eighteen.

I've changed in my sympathies since I've become a mother myself. In high school I went through a period where I was close with my mom and had to break with her in order to find myself and come back. Since that was my experience, that's often what happens in my books.