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. – G. Willow Wilson
To me, writing an ongoing series feels like driving a freight train downhill. All you can do is steer and pray. – G. Willow Wilson
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. – G. Willow Wilson
When you write for a comic series, many superheroes have 60 or some years of history that you are coming into. – G. Willow Wilson
The ‘Ms. Marvel’ mantle has passed to ‘Kamala Khan,’ a high school student from Jersey City who struggles to reconcile being an American teenager with the conservative customs of her Pakistani Muslim family. – G. Willow Wilson
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. – G. Willow Wilson
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. – G. Willow Wilson
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. – G. Willow Wilson
Ninety percent of the comic books I’ve written in the past had little or nothing to do with Islam. – G. Willow Wilson
I keep setting the bar higher for myself in terms of what I’m trying to accomplish. – G. Willow Wilson
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. – G. Willow Wilson
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.’ – G. Willow Wilson
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. – G. Willow Wilson
‘Butterfly Mosque’ came out of the emails I wrote to family and friends back home after moving to Egypt. – G. Willow Wilson
Sometimes, by using the most over-the-top, ridiculous plot device you can imagine, you get some interesting little conflicts and cool things that you might not otherwise have a chance to explore. – G. Willow Wilson
The road to democracy is rarely smooth, but for Egyptian women, it has been exceptionally bumpy. – G. Willow Wilson
The first comic I ever read was an ‘X-Men’ themed anti-smoking PSA they gave out in health class when I was about 10. – G. Willow Wilson
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. – G. Willow Wilson
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. – G. Willow Wilson
There’s a burden of representation that comes into play when there aren’t enough representatives of a certain group in popular culture. – G. Willow Wilson
For me, insomnia was something ordinary, and it came and went for ordinary reasons. – G. Willow Wilson
I think people, especially in the Muslim community, are rightly cautious any time you hear, ‘Oh, there’s going to be a Muslim character.’ – G. Willow Wilson
I think any time you have a super team, whether it’s all men or all women or both, what you have are people with very unique strengths that aren’t always totally compatible. – G. Willow Wilson
Anytime you’re writing stories about a group of people with whom you have limited experience, there’s a lot of guesswork. – G. Willow Wilson
‘Habibi’ is a complex and unapologetic work of fantasy – no idle undertaking for readers of any faith or no faith at all, but one well worth the trouble. – G. Willow Wilson
When we read fiction, we want to get outside of ourselves and are able to see from a perspective we haven’t seen through before. That can be very powerful. – G. Willow Wilson
Being a Muslim in America, I’ve noticed that there’s a ton of crossover between the Muslim community and geekdom. – G. Willow Wilson
My synesthesia is mostly gone – it was a much bigger factor when I was a kid. But having no depth perception is a bonus when you’re trying to lay out flat images and describe them to an artist – flat is all I see. – G. Willow Wilson
