Quotes from Sabaa Tahir

My mother and father were born and raised in Pakistan, where religion is entrenched in the culture and the culture is explicitly unyielding.

You walk into BookCon, and everybody is so excited... it's just paradise.

Reading about people who were so truly voiceless and powerless - Liberian child soldiers, Sudanese refugees, and, especially, Kashmiri women whose husbands or sons were imprisoned by the army with no hope of release - made me think about how I would feel if someone took my brothers from me.

I was an outsider. I looked different, and I felt really voiceless as a kid.

My readers and I, we have the same taste, and it's awesome. They'll tell me about stuff that I haven't heard of.

If I'm really excited about a scene, I used to wait to write it, and now I'll just write it. When you do that, all sorts of awesome things can happen from just giving in and writing that scene you're excited about.

I was 5 when I got the speech about how I would have to work harder and longer than everyone else because I was brown.

If I refused to get married, my parents would be brokenhearted and confused. Like any child close to her parents, I could not watch them suffer.

At age 10, or even 15, it would have meant the world to me to see a Pakistani girl portrayed positively, let alone as a comic book superhero.

When I asked myself what I'd want to see in a comic about a Pakistani superhero, the first word that came to mind was 'relatable.'

When I was growing up, I didn't feel strong. I felt weak. I felt like a scared little kid. So I naturally turned to books to deal with that feeling, and I really turned to fantasy. That's really what influenced my decision to write a fantasy novel.

Whatever the case, oftentimes, for a story to feel complete to me, I need more than one point of view.

I find booksellers comforting - they're my people.

I grew up raiding my brother's comic book stash. I tried to lose myself in fiction.

Great novels have great characterization no matter what. But multiple points of view let me examine characters from entirely different perspectives, allowing me to learn more about everyone in the process.

The 'Harry Potter' books had a huge impact on me.

In fantasy and science fiction, world-building is an essential part of the story. But as a reader, I don't just want descriptions of food, clothing, and places. I want to understand the world to its core, through the eyes of those who live in it.

Literature taught me that I wasn't alone, that I could become a writer if I worked at it, that my story mattered. Whether a young reader becomes a writer or not, they deserve to know that their story, whatever it may be, is important.

Evil comes in many forms, and whether you are male or female, that doesn't matter as much as what lurks in your mind.

Like me as a teen - and like many teenagers now - my characters are at a peculiar crossroads in their lives. They desperately seek freedom. But at the same time, they are constantly thwarted.

I don't go on social media with a mercenary intent to promote. That's just wrong. I go to learn, to listen, to have fun, to find people who love what I love and who introduce me to new things. That's where the joy is: in the interactions.

What is a nightstand without Mindy Kaling? I dip into her 'Why Not Me?' when I've had a particularly rough day. Her hilarious observations and anecdotes never fail to cheer me up.

'The Sword of Shannara' is about two brothers who find themselves on an epic quest to save humanity. It borrows from 'Lord of the Rings' but is still original in its own right. I read it in three days, then reread it, then went out and found every single book Terry Brooks ever wrote, and read all those.

People could be really horrible, you know? They would threaten my parents.