“When I was doing my research for 'Branded,' I'd meet groups of teenage...” — Alissa Quart Quote

“When I was doing my research for 'Branded,' I'd meet groups of teenagers and preteenagers or tweens, and they would laugh at a magazine spread in a women's magazine or teen girl magazine and say, 'I'd never buy this outfit. I know these girls are starving themselves.' But they probably would go out and buy the thing eventually.”

“Civic poetry offers us a way to think and talk about issues that so much of public speech ignores, to make them new by dissecting and repurposing public speech, prying its falsehoods from its half-truths. It is fighting for its right to critique our would-be democracy.”

“I pass on a lot of teen roles that get sent to me because a lot of the time it doesn't feel real. It's sugar-coated. There's no depth to it.”

“When I was a teenager I would lock myself in the bathroom for hours, bouffanting my hair like Patty Duke and trying to recreate Barbra Streisand's flawless eyeliner, only to comb it all out and wash it all off before stepping out into the world a butchish bisexual teen.”

“I instinctively dress a bit tougher because I've spent a lot of time in the U.S. and I realised there was a certain image projected of me here. I've always been an absolute rebel. When I was in my teen years I had piercings and wore all black.”