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" 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. "

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" What's demanded from us black creatives is both a blessing and a curse, because it pushes you to be your absolute best. You cannot be anything less. "

" There's so much talk of representation in politics and entertainment - it's everywhere - but I didn't realize representation was important until really my senior year of high school. "

" With a fantasy world, it's like, this is my world. I literally made it. So if I tell you something, you do have to sit back and observe more. You need to sit back and listen more to understand what is going on or what's happening in the world. And I think there's a lot of power in that. "

" The power of fantasy is that you can make people understand the deeper realities of our world in a way that they wouldn't normally be able to because of all the things in our world that closes them off. "

" We like epic stories, we like adventure, we like epic fights, so if you can mix a great story that can also really teach someone about a different experience, you have the potential to really help people. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Everyone has a story that they read when they were younger that influenced them. "

" 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. "

" Imagination is a funny thing - we sometimes need to see something before we can truly picture it. "

" 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. "

" You're never wasting your time as long as you learn from every single thing you do, whether you feel like those attempts are successful or not. "

" In terms of people who want to be writers, I wish more people knew how much work it was. "

" Death is something that I am still trying to figure out a healthy relationship with. "

" 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. "

" We've been told the same story for so long. We've seen literally 1,000 'Lord of the Rings' movies. "

" I didn't say I have to be a writer, but I did say that I needed to publish at least one book. "

" You don't realise how cool your culture is until you get out of that phase of trying to fit in. "

" 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. "

" 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 can make something out of every unfinished story and every rejection if you work at it. "

" With the Internet, there are so many ways to connect with other writers who will be some of your best friends and best sources of support for your entire life. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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! "