G. Willow Wilson

“You have such an odd relationship to your environment," mused the man. "Such a paranoid relationship. You seem intent on existing in smaller and smaller spaces, filled with more and more gadgets, with the mistaken impression that this will give you more control over your lives. There's something a little impious about it.""Nothing wrong with gadgets," muttered Alif."No, except that they're not magic," said the man, "and a lot of you seem to believe they should be.”

“Nobody as the right to give up on a whole generation before it's even had a right to prove itself.”

“Muslims are ordinary members of the working public, just like you.”

“When I am in Egypt, I am along for the ride - I am a privileged outsider, but an outsider nonetheless.”

“I'm not a programmer myself, but I am a very, very picky end user of technology. I like my machines to work they way they're supposed to, all the time.”

“Thematically, in a lot of what I write, there's a sense of displacement, of being rooted in multiple places, and how that can tug at your identities and your wants and your goals.”

“It's very difficult to balance different audiences and talk to each one without selling the others short. There is no universal literature - or, if there is, I don't know how to write it.”

“I've wanted to write comics ever since I figured out it was a job.”

“In all likelihood, you've been treated by a Muslim doctor or served by a Muslim waiter or worked beside a Muslim computer programmer. Even if you think, 'I don't know any Muslims,' it's probably not true.”

“We don't want to create a literary ghetto in which black writers are only allowed to write black characters and women writers are put on 'girl books.'”

“So the stories aren't just stories, is what you're saying. They're really secret knowledge disguised as stories.""One could say that of all stories, younger brother.”

“If you love things or ideas or people that contradict each other, you have to be prepared to fight for every square inch of intellectual real estate you occupy.”

“I'm writing in English; I'm writing for a Western audience, but the people I'm surrounded by in my daily life are mostly non-white.”

“I think all these pop cultural media often reflect conversations we're having in the real world at that moment in time. I think one of the big conversations we're having as a culture is we thought we'd solved sexism and racism, and we're realizing more and more that we haven't.”

“My synesthesia is mostly gone - it was a much bigger factor when I was a kid. But having no depth perception is a bonus when you're trying to lay out flat images and describe them to an artist - flat is all I see.”

“Love the life you have been given. And be humbled by it. It is not to be despised.”

“When you write for a comic series, many superheroes have 60 or some years of history that you are coming into.”

“Anytime you're writing stories about a group of people with whom you have limited experience, there's a lot of guesswork.”

“I discovered I was a monotheist... That rules out polytheism. I have also had a problem with authority, which rules out any religion with a priesthood or leader who claims to be God's representative on Earth.”

“In 2003, as a 21-year-old convert to Islam, I moved from Colorado to Cairo to see what life was like in a Muslim country.”