Quotes from Sabaa Tahir

My dad was very strict. He was absolutely the Tiger Dad. You know, 'You got a 98% on this test? Why didn't you get 100?' That was normal life for my brothers and I.

You pour your soul into your book, but you never know how it will be received, and when people like your baby, it's a great feeling.

Some of my best book recommendations have come from booksellers.

It was hard to feel hated as a child.

I wanted to write something that reflected the violence and horror of the world, but I also wanted to reflect the way people fight to survive, even when society wants to crush them.

I like to write when things are calm - and when I'm not worried about my well-being, the well-being of those I love.

'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' is one of my all-time top YA fantasy trilogies, so I was a little nervous about reading 'Strange the Dreamer.' Of course, I shouldn't have been worried because Laini Taylor immediately grabbed me by the proverbial lapels and refused to let me go.

I think that YA stories have a lot of heart, and I think that whatever age we are, we connect to them because we sort of see ourselves in them.

Honesty and truth in writing is so important, and I think that YA writing above all is honest, and I think that appeals to anyone of any age.

As a kid living in an isolated desert town, the most diversity I saw in my media was Claudia Kishi, the Japanese American girl from 'The Baby-Sitters Club.'

When I was a kid, I worked as a clerk at my parent's motel. From when I was eight or nine, I rented rooms, helped with laundry, folding tons of towels. And then I also worked at my dad's gas station more as a young adult and as an adult.

As a teenager, I felt so hemmed in and trapped, both by the place I lived and the expectations others had about school, college, and a future career.

Anytime you own a small business, it's all you. There is nobody to fall back on.

I grew up in a small town in the Mojave Desert where conservative Republicans were as common as cacti. Inexplicably, I grew up liberal and a feminist.

My brother had a big comic book chest, and he kept the key in the exact same place. So when he would leave for camp or be gone for a few days at a friend's house, I would totally sneak into that room and open the comic book chest and see 'X-Men' and 'Sandman' and all the Neil Gaiman stuff and all the Marvel stuff and some old 'Thor' comics.

How far do you go in following orders? So many people use it as an excuse, right? 'I was following orders.' But what does that mean?

Multiple characters' opinions on societal roles, as well as their perceptions of themselves and others, help me lose myself in whatever strange and wonderful setting I'm reading about.

For a while, gently bumping into my nightstand meant a pile of 50 books clattering onto my head and the floor. After the 10th time this happened, I moved most of the books to a shelf in the spare room. Now, my nightstand is sort of like a bookish country club. And not all books get in.

I've loved mountains since I was a girl, and when I discovered mountaineering fiction after college, I was hooked.

I grew up in an isolated town, out in the middle of the Mojave Desert in the middle of a naval base. My family was one of the only South Asian families in this town. We felt it. We knew.

My parents worked harder than anyone I have ever met. They had so many businesses. There was the motel, but throughout my childhood, they also had a drive-through dairy, a gas station, a clothing store, a computer reselling business.

Like so many other young South Asians in America, I am the product of two cultures whose conflicting values pull at me with equal urgency. Never have I felt as torn between the two as I do about the question of marriage.

When you write your first book, you're writing in a vacuum; it doesn't matter how much time it takes. And then with the second book, you're on contract, and you have deadlines, and it's a little bit tougher. And also the expectations. You don't want to let your characters down.

The way I felt growing up, which was like an outcast - I was weird, I was a nerd, I read fantasy books - I think a lot of fantasy book readers and a lot of readers and writers in general have that experience of isolation.