Quotes from G. Willow Wilson

My faith did not require beauty or belonging - the deeper I went into my practice, the less it required at all.

I don't think there's something inherently irreligious about comics.

To me, writing an ongoing series feels like driving a freight train downhill. All you can do is steer and pray.

Love the life you have been given. And be humbled by it. It is not to be despised.

'Lost' seems to be the inverse of 'Air': It explores dispossession and identity by forcing a bunch of people into one invented landscape instead of using many invented landscapes to keep people apart.

Islam is antiauthoritarian, sex-positive monotheism.

Americans look at the Middle East as a source of trauma because of 9/11. At the same time, I could see the fear going on in the Middle East as well - which would be the next country to be invaded or sanctioned? Being around those tensions was traumatic for me.

'Air' is very placeless - it's set in many different countries, and much of the story is about going places rather than being places. 'Air' is about travelers, and I'm a chronic traveler.

I write about real life as it is lived by the young American Muslim women that I've had the pleasure of meeting throughout the course of my travels as a writer and being able to speak in different places and meet different people at signings and things.

The road to democracy is rarely smooth, but for Egyptian women, it has been exceptionally bumpy.

I have younger friends who are in this pinch where they feel they've been counted out before they've had a chance to prove themselves. They've inherited a lot of debt - not just student debt but environmental debt, political debt. They really feel squeezed.

Choosing a spouse with religion in mind is not always a mistake, especially if your heritage and your faith are important parts of who you are. The trick is, as always, to recognize a good thing when you see it - and never mistake the bad for something more.

Because the traditional mode of dress for Muslim women is so distinct - the headcovering, which is not there for guys - women carry a greater burden of representation than Muslim men do in non-Muslim societies.

I think comics are really part of The Zeitgeist. They reflect back to us the issues that we're concerned about in the time they are written.

Thematically, in a lot of what I write, there's a sense of displacement, of being rooted in multiple places, and how that can tug at your identities and your wants and your goals.

So many people are of mixed heritage; everyone is from somewhere else.

In comics, we're all weird together. I can go to a comics convention and not stand out, even though I'm the only woman in a headscarf there, because the guy next to me has a beard and a Sailor Moon costume.

'Butterfly Mosque' came out of the emails I wrote to family and friends back home after moving to Egypt.

When I need guidance or just to kvetch or to bounce ideas off of people, I go to Gail Simone, who is very much kind of the den mother of all of us who are working comics.

It took me a long time to square with the fact that none of my experiences are typical - I'm not a typical American, but I'm also not a typical Muslim.

As a writer and a mom, I wish I could split into two or three different people so I could be with my kids all day, write all day, and go out and do the interviews all day. Multiplicity woman!

Conscience. Conscience is the ultimate measure of a man.

A lot of my writer friends - some of whom are brilliant - work when the Muse calls them, for lack of a better description. You know, days of nothing, then this creative burst where they write for 36 hours straight fueled by caffeine and idealism.

I think every Muslim woman has to feel the world out for herself.