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All Quotes by author - Tomi Adeyemi
" Any person that you would want to watch your movie or see your show or read your book, there's a million other things that they could be watching or reading or doing. "
Reading
Want
Watch
" As writers, our craft makes us sit alone at a desk and hammer away at our novel. Doing that day in and day out makes it really easy to forget that there's a whole community of writers out there, and they love contributing to other writers' success! "
Day
Alone
Community
" At every writers' conference, you have the opportunity to hear from best-selling authors, top literary agents, and excellent editors who will demystify the publishing industry and give you great advice, no matter where you are in your writing career or what you're currently struggling with. "
Opportunity
You
Advice
" Children of color need a mirror to see themselves in. And then people who don't have that experience, they need a window. They need a really personalized way to see what people who are different from them are going through. "
Children
People
Mirror
" Death is something that I am still trying to figure out a healthy relationship with. "
Out
Relationship
I Am
" Every first draft sucks, so when you have your favorite novel, and you're like, 'Wow, this is a masterpiece,' and then you write your first draft, and you're like, 'This is really bad,' and then you're like 'I can't do this because this is nowhere close.' When, in reality, the book you loved so much started out just as crappy. "
You
Loved
Reality
" Everyone has a story that they read when they were younger that influenced them. "
Story
Read
Younger
" For readers of color, and especially black readers, black girls, I just want them to feel seen. And not just seen - I want them to feel epic and know that they are epic. "
Know
Want
Black
" I am a firm believer that the craziest stories that have been told and are being told are in anime. They have character arcs that go over, like, 400 episodes, like a 400-episode character arc. "
Go
I Am
Like
" I deeply believed that I wasn't worthy - that I couldn't be in the stories even I was creating. I don't want anyone else to feel like that. "
Worthy
Like
Feel
" I didn't say I have to be a writer, but I did say that I needed to publish at least one book. "
Writer
Say
Publish
" If I went to any other college, I probably would have been pre-med. But I felt like I had freedom to do what I wanted to do at Harvard. "
Like
Harvard
Freedom
" If you want to be traditionally published, then you most likely want to get a literary agent. To sign with an agent, you need to send them a query letter, but agents can get up to 20,000 query letters a year. With numbers like that, it helps to get in front of agents with every opportunity you have. "
Numbers
Need
Opportunity
" If you want to write, just believe that you can, because it's about perseverance. "
Want
Believe
Write
" I grew up in a predominantly white community - Hinsdale, Illinois - and given that, I feel blessed because I could still count my experiences with blatant racism on two hands. I thought racism was the substitute teacher picking on you because she assumes that you're a delinquent, and she doesn't know you have the highest score in the class. "
Blessed
Teacher
You
" I had a lot of different reasons for writing the book, but at its core was the desire to write for black teenage girls growing up reading books they were absent from. That was my experience as a child. 'Children of Blood and Bone' is a chance to address that. To say you are seen. "
You
Book
Children
" Imagination is a funny thing - we sometimes need to see something before we can truly picture it. "
See
Imagination
Need
" I'm a huge 'Harry Potter' fan, but I still think there is a lot of anime that is crazier than 'Harry Potter,' and that was a seven-book masterpiece. "
Fan
Than
Still
" In my perfect world, we'd have one black girl fantasy book every month. We need them, and we need fantasy stories about black boys as well. "
Black
World
Need
" In terms of people who want to be writers, I wish more people knew how much work it was. "
People
Work
Wish
" I spent 12 years of my life writing stories without black people. That's insane to me. It's insane that I could have believed in magical portals and dragons and all that stuff, but to believe a black person could be experiencing those things was unimaginable. "
People
Writing
Black
" It's not about creating something that eight billion people would like. It's about creating something and being able to reach the maybe, like, one million people that would like it a lot. "
Reach
Creating
Like
" I've been writing stories all my life. My very first story had two little black girls riding horses. They were both me, too, so that's how into me I was. "
My Life
Life
Me
" I want a little black girl to pick up my book one day and see herself as the star. I want her to know that she's beautiful, and she matters, and she can have a crazy, magical adventure even if an ignorant part of the world tells her she can never be Hermione Granger. "
Book
Beautiful
Adventure
" I want to give something to the world that I feel I missed out on as a child, and I want to help people of all races, ethnicities, and orientations understand that no matter what differences we may think we have, everyone is a human, and everyone deserves to be respected and valued. "
Help
People
Think
" I will always be my hardest critic. Nobody else will ever be able to come at something I do harder than I come at myself. "
Nobody
Will
Myself
" My freshman year of college, 'The Hunger Games' movie adaptation came out, and I was really excited about it. This was maybe 2011. I loved it, but there was a lot of hateful backlash against the black characters in the film. "
Black
College
Loved
" My very first story, I was around 5, and I really just wrote myself. When I was 5, I loved myself so much I gave myself a twin named Tomi. Everything started out fine. But then I didn't write another black character until I was 18. "
Character
Black
Loved
" Part of the reason everyone is freaking out over 'Black Panther' is because we've never seen it. We have two thousand years of stories, and we've never seen it. "
Everyone
Never
Reason
" The knowledge and insights you can get in just one day at a writers' conference make it worth the trip. "
Knowledge
You
Conference
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