Quotes from Margaret Stohl

The Lowcountry traditionally is a logical place where the big ships stopped and brought new things in from the ocean, and the islands have a mystical tradition. It is such a visual place, too, with these iconic villages with the Spanish moss and the village and historical homes and the coast.

I grew up sitting in my closet waiting to go Narnia.

Everything I write is about big feelings. What I care about is trying to be brave enough to feel how you feel and to be emotionally true.

Sam and Dean Winchester sitting on the top of the Impala sharing their feelings over a beer is a reward worth driving any 'Supernatural' demon away - but in real life, they'd have crippling co-dependency issues.

When you're writing about superpowers, you're writing about power. When you're writing about immortals, you're writing about mortality.

Darkness does not leave us easily as we would hope.

It doesn't matter if it's aliens or emotional weapons or whatever - it's still a real story about big feelings that have to come out.

Han Solo would never wear the earring Harrison Ford wears.

Sometimes people who sell books are seen as corporate salesmen, and people who sell reading are seen as literacy advocates, but you can't really separate the two.

I always say, 'I'm cracked. My characters are cracked. And you, reader, you're cracked, too.'

It's like how science fiction in the '50s was a way of talking about war without actually having to risk any political capital. The obvious metaphor is power and powerlessness, but I also think it's a way of experimenting with dangerous feelings in a safe arena and trying things out.

I'm up at dawn. I practically fall asleep at dinner.

Harper Lee was my David Bowie, and I feel her loss in my bones.

I first read Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' as a teen in school, like you did. I read the book alone, eating lunch at my locker, neatly scored oranges my mother divided into five lines with a circle at the top, so my fingers could dig more easily into the orange skin. To this day, the smell of oranges reminds me of 'Mockingbird.'

You better have your story down before you take it to a teenager.

Anyone who says that writing for children or teens is easier than writing for adults has never tried it, because they are so much more critical than adults. You cannot get anything past them.

Sports section and a sticky bun. Know what that means.

I fictionship. I love fictional men.

We kept my middle schooler home from school for three days before we turned in our final draft because she was so mean and so brutal at editing out all the cheesy bits. She would roll her eyes and make fun of us, and it was what we needed.

The privilege, and the challenges, of taking on Black Widow have never been lost on me. I worked on the first 'Spiderman' game as well as 'Fantastic Four,' and I had always wanted to be able to tell more of a character-driven comic book story than was possible to fit into a game narrative.

You need books to read and readers for books.

I understand that fictional men aren't real. Not 'really real'. I know this the same way I wonder if my readers are disappointed when they meet me.

Everyone reads Harper Lee personally. For me, 'Mockingbird' was about admitting my own hyphenated identity - about loving and hating my world, about both belonging and not belonging to the community I came from.

We wanted to celebrate the 'Dangerous Deception' release by letting everyone experience the thrill of sharing a book with a reader who wouldn't otherwise have one.