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When I was a kid - 10, 11, 12, 13 - the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody.

When I was about 13, I met the coolest, chicest young woman I had ever seen. She was a neighbor of mine who became a fashion designer and had a small design studio. She taught me so many things about style and fashion. I had always loved making things, so when she told me about her career in fashion, I knew I had found my path.

When you're 10, 11, 12, and you're watching your idols, you feel like you know them. I found more in common with these people when they talked in interviews than I did with my classmates.

When I was 12, that's when I went to college. All my friends were 20, 21, and I was 12. It didn't even occur to me that that was strange.

When I was young, I was looking for people to look up to - role models I could respect.

I always imagined that magically, at some point, I would settle into this very easy and refined sophistication, but it turns out that who you are at eleven is pretty much who you are at 27, so I don't know how much I've learned over the years.

By the time I was twelve, I had started my own theater company and was doing plays in the backyard and the front yard and all over the neighborhood, so, you know, I was definitely a lifer even back when I was 10.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

I loved everything about being ten, eleven, and twelve years old, and seem to make most of my heroines and heroes that age so I can reexperience all those pitfalls and wonderful discoveries. It helps me to figure out my own life when I write from that eleven year old place!

I think I was about seven when people started telling my parents I would be an actor or a performer of some kind.