Angie Thomas

The way you speak should not determine your intelligence. I should be able to say 'lit,' and you still know I'm intelligent. I should be able to say 'turn up,' and that doesn't take away from my intelligence. I wanted to break down that stereotype a little bit. ”

At the time when I was in college, Oscar Grant had just lost his life in Oakland, Calif. He was an unarmed young black male who had a record. And at the time when his death was making headlines, more people were talking about what he had done in his past than the fact that he unjustly lost his life. ”

I think, as a writer, sometimes you do worry, 'Am I just writing, or am I putting the burden of African-Americans on my shoulder and carrying it?' But if we just write the stories that we're supposed to write, that's when we have the biggest impact. ”

At 7, I was shooting 3s with so much ease that the guys at the neighborhood park were impressed. Michael Jordan was one of the best humans to walk the earth in my eyes, third only to Jesus and my mother. ”

Especially for young POC, when we enter majority-white spaces, we feel the need to assimilate, to blend in, to prove ourselves. I don't think we discuss it enough. ”

I wanted to write a book like a rapper would write it - I didn't want to hold back. Rappers catch a lot of slack; I'm not going to be cursing up a storm, but when I look at Nas... his first album is one of my favorites. I want to tell stories like that. ”

When I was a kid, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was easy - the next Lisa Leslie. ”

When you say, 'Southern,' or you speak about a southern accent, there's always that drawl, and usually from white people. That's what people associate with the South. But we're all different. The black southern accent is different. ”

I look at books as being a form of activism. Sometimes they'll show us a side of the world that we might not have known about. ”

I'm not sure I could ever write for adults. That's not to throw shade or anything, but I feel like teenagers are much more open-minded and willing to listen sometimes. ”