Quotes from G. Willow Wilson

It seems like whenever you write about Muslims, people assume that you're writing about the Quran, you are writing about the Prophet Muhammad. There's no sense that Muslims are capable of individualism, that they're capable of making mistakes that are somehow not connected to Islam.

In prose, you have a lot more room for digression, for very meaty kinds of dialogues. In graphic novels, you're writing haiku-length dialogue. Your job is to be efficient, to get out of the way of the art.

I've wanted to write comics ever since I figured out it was a job.

Real tolerance means respecting other people even when they baffle you and you have no idea why they think what they think.

Leaving your country at a tender age really rearranges the way you perceive the world. So I feel marginally attached to many places rather than deeply attached to any one place.

Despite all the criticisms that have been leveled at the comics community, both in terms of fans and creators, I have always felt more comfortable and accepted in the comics community than I have in any other medium of publishing that I've had the pleasure of working in.

I don't think being a writer who is religious means you have to write about nothing but religion. When I do write about religion, it's to inform the story, not to push a certain agenda.

I think all these pop cultural media often reflect conversations we're having in the real world at that moment in time. I think one of the big conversations we're having as a culture is we thought we'd solved sexism and racism, and we're realizing more and more that we haven't.

I think that's a huge theme in superhero books across the board: When you have this massive power, how do you use it responsibly? When do you intervene? Those are the big questions.

We don't want to create a literary ghetto in which black writers are only allowed to write black characters and women writers are put on 'girl books.'

Comic book readers tend to be pretty secular and anti-authoritarian; nothing is above satire in their eyes.

The 'Islam vs. the West' dialogue ceased to be about real people a long time ago.

The transition between life in red-state America and life in the Arab capital was at times overwhelming because of the traditional segregation of men and women in many public and private settings.

For me, insomnia was something ordinary, and it came and went for ordinary reasons.

Being a Muslim in America, I've noticed that there's a ton of crossover between the Muslim community and geekdom.

There are very religious people who write comics and who love comics.

The Qur'an is in many ways far less concrete than the Bible, relying on the esoteric more often than the apparent.

It's patently impossible for a Muslim character to represent 'all Muslims.'

I discovered I was a monotheist... That rules out polytheism. I have also had a problem with authority, which rules out any religion with a priesthood or leader who claims to be God's representative on Earth.

There's a burden of representation that comes into play when there aren't enough representatives of a certain group in popular culture.

I don't want to compare myself to somebody like Fitzgerald or Hemingway, but I feel like, for some writers, going to a certain city, a certain place, is what kickstarts your imaginative process.

Out-marriage is an issue religious groups have been wrestling with for some time. Of course men and women fall in love. Of course it's not always convenient to their respective cultural and spiritual norms.

I tend to deal with characters who are sort of at that same point of wrestling with, 'Who am I going to be as an adult? What do I believe? How am I defining myself in the context of my culture and my peer groups, my family?'

For most inhabitants of the Arab world, the prevailing cultural attitude toward women - fed and encouraged by Wahhabi doctrine, which is based on Bedouin social norms rather than Islamic jurisprudence - often trumps the rights accorded to women by Islam.