Quotes from Alexandra Bracken

I've learned to really love revision over the years and worked hard to build up my craft muscle to make my revisions less and less painful with each book.

I always try to have my supernatural or fantasy elements feel grounded in reality so they're easier for the reader to accept and digest.

The thing that scares me is that some part of me understands where they're coming from. They took everything from us, you know? Why shouldn't we be able to take it back if we have the power to?

If there was one good thing that came out of all this, it was that I got to meet you. I would go through it all again - I would, as long as it meant I'd met you.

It was almost painful, I thought, to have a heart so swollen with gratitude and what must have been pure, untainted happiness. I wanted to live inside the feeling forever.

When a girl cries, few things are more worthless than a boy

He's so busy looking inside people to find the good that he misses the knife they're holding in their hand.

Everything in New York is a fight. It's a fight to get on the subway. It's a fight to go to CVS. It's a fight to get a cab. And eventually, it wears you down.

From the time I was in first grade or so, my dad collected 'Star Wars' toy figures from the 1970s and '80s, and we'd take weekend family trips to antique shops and to toy stores. My father collected a crazy amount of 'Star Wars' stuff over the years, and he and I traveled to many conventions.

Being a very tall person, I have always felt a kinship with giraffes.

I was genuinely lucky to have the professors I did, many of whom took a very humanist approach in teaching history that went beyond memorizing dates and battles and all of that - basically, looking at the life of individuals throughout history, aided by fascinating primary sources.

In the years between 'Afterlight' and 'Legacy,' we see a Zu who has watched all of her older friends head out into the world to do meaningful work while she's made to wait and hang back because of her age. It reinforces a feeling in her that she's falling further and further behind and won't ever catch up to them.

'The Darkest Minds' came from a period in my life where I felt my most powerless, when I was a teenager.

The powers of the teenagers in 'The Darkest Minds' were always meant to represent that inherent drive that young people have to make change, and how the world pushes back against it.

I didn't get to experience proper autumn until I was eighteen and heading off to college on the East Coast!

We are all protective over the things we love.

The truth is, I love history and studied it in college, with a particular focus on early American history. My love is so deep, in fact, I went to school at The College of William & Mary in Colonial Williamsburg.

The Darkest Minds tend to hide behind the most unlikely faces.

You can destroy a factory, and they'll build another. But once you destroy a life, that's it. You never get that person back.

What good is strength if you have no sense?

It might be the history major in me, but I look to the past when I try to construct my fictional futures.

When I first read 'Outlander' a few years ago, I was shocked to find that Jamie was the complete package: incredibly smart, incredibly witty, strong but emotionally vulnerable, passionate to a fault - and, well, the Scottish accent doesn't hurt! I actually stopped reading at several points to swoon over something he said... he's really that good.

I used to dream about turning back time, about reclaiming the things I'd lost and the person I used to be.

I would be honored if someone reads my books and it inspires them to write their own work.