Words matter. These are the best Sabaa Tahir Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
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.
‘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 find booksellers comforting – they’re my people.
Ani DiFranco – I love her.
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.
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 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.
I’ve loved mountains since I was a girl, and when I discovered mountaineering fiction after college, I was hooked.
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.
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.
I grew up raiding my brother’s comic book stash. I tried to lose myself in fiction.
When I went to college, it was so easy. And I worked two jobs while I was in school all the way through; I put myself through school. But working and studying was easy for me because I had worked so hard in high school, studying all the time. Taking only three classes and then working was an easy life in comparison.
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.’
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.
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.
I grew up feeling voiceless and powerless as a kid. I turned to books – fantasy books in particular – to give me comfort. As I grew up, I realized I could find that sense of power and voice if I simply started writing.
People could be really horrible, you know? They would threaten my parents.
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.
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.
Evil comes in many forms, and whether you are male or female, that doesn’t matter as much as what lurks in your mind.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ‘Harry Potter’ books had a huge impact on me.
It was hard to feel hated as a child.
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.
I was an outsider. I looked different, and I felt really voiceless as a kid.
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.
I actually like love triangles in books. That’s one of the main reasons why I wrote one. I really love love triangles.
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.