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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Tomi Adeyemi

Children

People

Mirror

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Tomi Adeyemi

My Life

Life

" 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 will always be my hardest critic. Nobody else will ever be able to come at something I do harder than I come at myself. "

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

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

" 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. "

" You need a community to succeed. In the back of every book is an acknowledgments page full of all the people it took to get that writer to the book you're holding. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

Tomi Adeyemi

Harvard

Freedom

" The YA author community is generally pretty friendly, and they care. "

Tomi Adeyemi

Pretty

Care

" 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! "

" 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. "

" The knowledge and insights you can get in just one day at a writers' conference make it worth the trip. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

Tomi Adeyemi

Reach

Creating

" 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. "

" The things I want to do mostly involve writing. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

Tomi Adeyemi

I Am