My original inspiration was my mom: a few years after the death of my dad, she started dating one my teachers!

No matter how nice the company one might be with, however, it is never pleasant to have a rifle pointed at one's back.

Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.

There's nothing secret about it. Everyone knows that I am waiting for my real parents, the king and queen, to come restore me to my rightful throne.

I was too lazy to start a whole new story, so I just stuck a princess into the story I was working on... and The Princess Diaries was born!

My original inspiration was my mom: a few years after the death of my dad, she started dating one my teachers!

Save your rejections so that later when you are famous you can show them to people and laugh.

My favorite book of all time is Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons.

All of my characters are a little bit based on people I know in real life. You know when you do that you have to change the character a little bit in case your friend or your relative reads the book, because you don't want them to know you wrote about them... They might get mad.

For each book, I do end up making a kind of playlist to fit the characters.

Growing up, I mostly read comic books and sci-fi. Then I discovered the book 'Jane Eyre' by Jane Austen. It introduced me to the world of romance, which I have since never left. Also, the world of the first-person narrative.

I actually love writing for teens best. I had such an awful time in my own teen years - I love having the chance to relive them through my fiction.

I like to think of my books and the movies of my books living in two separate universes. Each is very nice, but only one is correct - the book. But that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the other versions, and I always do.

I think if I hadn't been a writer, I'd have been a teacher like my dad. He was a college professor, and one of my greatest regrets is that he passed away before I was able to prove to him that I wasn't going to be stuck working at Rax Roast Beef for the rest of my life!

I think you get so wrapped up in the book you're currently writing, it's hard to think about anything else. But I know as soon as I'm done with this book, I'll move on to something else.

I was an unhappy child, and that puts me off having a child of my own.

I was the kind of kid who couldn't really stop making up stories during class. I didn't do very well academically because I was always drawing these little doodles in the margins of my notebooks and I wasn't bringing home the best grades.

If you're writing a screenplay, you need to be prepared to let go: there's a good chance the words you write aren't going to be the ones that end up on screen.

My family, they're story tellers. My mom is Irish, and my dad is Italian. In my family, we weren't allowed to watch TV while we ate - we had to sit around the table and tell stories about our day.

One of the biggest motivations for me with writing my books is to offer girls some escapism, especially girls who really need it, like I did.

Pretty isn't the only thing that matters - being smart and kind matters more, of course - but all daughters should hear from their moms that they look pretty once in a while.

Screenwriting is a much more collaborative effort. When you write a novel, it's just you, with input from your editor.

This is how many people become artists, musicians, writers, computer programmers, record-holding athletes, scientists... by spending time alone practicing what they love.

When I did see the story of Persephone, I was really drawn to it. Persephone, the goddess of spring, was kept from Olympus by her mother, Demeter, because Demeter was very worried that the gods of Olympus would do something terrible to her.

When I was a kid, I had a couple of really good friends, like some really good best friends, but I was really shy other than that.

When you feel like an outsider - for whatever reason - you spend a lot of time alone.

Writing used to be my hobby, but now that it's my job, I have no hobby - except watching TV and laying around the pool reading 'U.S. Weekly.' I have tried many hobbies, such as knitting, Pilates, ballet, yoga, and guitar, but none of them have taken.

Anything can happen in the blink of an eye. Anything at all. One. Two. Three. Blink.

Diet Coke does not contain nasty chemicals. It contains lovely and delicious carbonation caffeine and aspartame. Whats unnatural about that

Wait. Why am I thinking about Krispy Kremes Were supposed to be exercising.

Maybe nobody has a right to tell anybody to shut up. Maybe this is how wars get started, because someone tells someone else to shut up, and then no one will apologize.

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.

It was tough at the time but when I was younger, my Dad. I would say my Dad, because without him I wouldn't have been here. I mean it was tough for me because he was really demanding. With him, it was never enough, you know, anything I did was never enough.

David and Dad didn't get along too well growing up. I mean we all got along, but it was harder on David, because David wasn't going to be the son that Dad wanted. But now they're like best friends.

Where I come from, you don't really talk about how much you're earning. Those things are private. My dad never told my mum how much he was earning. I'm certainly not going to tell the world. I'm doing well.

I feel lazy when I'm not working. I learned all my business sense from my dad. He always believed in me, and I think the last thing he said to me before he passed away was, 'I know you're gonna be OK. I'm not worried about you'.

And I love Mel Brooks. My Dad loved his movies, too, they're awesome, the kind of thing that if you're in for ten minutes, you're in for two hours.

My mom and dad met at UCLA when he as a captain in the Air Force and she was in her junior year.

My dad was born in Chicago in 1908... his parents came from Russia. They settled in Chicago, where they lived in a little tiny grocery store with eight or nine children - in the backroom all together - and my grandmother got the idea to go into the movie business.

Mom and Dad would stay in bed on Sunday morning, but the kids would have to go to church.

My dad was dean of fine arts at the university. I was casting bronzes in the school foundry. I was using the university as a playground.

I have to remind my dad, 'Journalists - no matter how many cigars they smoke with you - are not your friends, so don't talk to them.'

We came from a family where we ran our own small business. Our dad made his own products. We made our own sausages, our own meatloafs, our own pickles. Dad had to do everything himself. He had to figure out how to finance his business.

My dad was a carpenter and I would work with him during the summer and umpire on the nights I wasn't playing.

It was sort of just a family sport. My mom and dad were pretty keen golfers when I was young and so were my grandparents, and I just sort of tagged along with them.

My dad takes care of me as a manager and as a dad. That's his job, you know, to take care of me. He has my best interests at heart.

My mom and dad are both in stand-up comedy, so that's where I started, that's where I got everything. My roots are holding the mic.

Joanna points her camera at a section of society unused to having cameras pointed at it. But I don't know about categorizing them in terms of class; I'm a bit wary of that. My dad is the son of a shipbuilder.

Now my dad is with me, traveling with me and a big part of this whole thing is I like to mix it up a little bit, you know. Who gets to take their father on a private jet across the country and stay in first class hotels? So we're enjoying it, but I'd stop if it's not possible.