Tomi Adeyemi

“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 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.”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“The things I want to do mostly involve writing.”

“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.”

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

“'Children of Blood and Bone' is basically 'Black Panther' with magic.”

“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.”

“If you want to write, just believe that you can, because it's about perseverance.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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