Yeah, I spent my teen years in West Virginia, and when I was a kid, in Louisiana. I definitely have that exposure to two different sorts of rural: the South and Appalachia.
I will be able to look back on my teen years as spent on a television set just having the biggest bunch of fun.
I would not recommend a teen getting into modeling if they're not solid when it comes to their grades and school. That comes first. My mother always told me that came first.
Most of the offers I get from Hollywood are for teen comedies. My manager thinks I'm crazy for turning down all that money, but I'm very picky.
I love writing about the summer between high school and college. It's the last gasp of really being a teen.
I progressed through so many different styles of music through my teen years, both as a player and a vocalist, particularly the jazz and pop of the early 20th Century.
To be honest, I haven't seen a lot of the current crop of teen movies because there's only so much time and there's nothing that really drives me to do it.
I did try to get a few of those teen high-school movies, but they just didn't like me. I guess I wasn't a certain type.
When I started writing, there was nothing about zombies. It was all teen movies, which to me are scarier than zombies, but that's another story.
Our teens are embedded in a culture driven by competition and perfectionism, where success is defined by status, performance and their appearance.
I had never really pictured myself working in children's ministries. I always figured I would be more comfortable with maybe teens or adult ministries.
I write for teens partially to work out whatever it was that I needed to from my own teenage years.
You can't draw her because you idolize her. You keep trying to create a tribute. But these drawings aren't about that. They're the truth.
Especially now, with 'Glee,' it's allowed a lot of kids to love music and performing at a young age. All ages watched 'American Idol,' but I think it was nice to be able to show kids, 'Hey, you can be here, too.'
I don't think rap really fits in to 'American Idol' in the sense that I believe rap is an art form in itself more akin to poetry, more akin to drama, if you will.
Never in all her life had she imagined that this idolized millinery could look, to those who paid for it, like the decorations of an insane monkey.
Do we secretly idolize our imagined opposites, yearning to become the role models for others we know we could never be for ourselves?
You will never be fully resigned to the will of God if you are troubled by human opinion of you, or if you make for yourself a little idol of what people say.
But vilifying those we love always detaches us from them a little. We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.
I wanted to reject it all because I was sick of being perfect. I was so bored with normality and dreams of poster boys and tabloid covers.
As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol.
