Margaret Stohl Quotes

I always say, ‘I’m cracked. My characters are cracked. And you, reader, you’re cracked, too.’

I was raised in a community of Christian orthodoxy that had traveled with my parents to Los Angeles when they moved there for my father‘s job.

I think, to give our bookshelf a little credit, our area of the library and the bookstore has attracted stronger writers as it’s started to thrive.

It’s a fallacy that people think that today‘s teenagers are shallow or somehow less intelligent than in the past.

I’m up at dawn. I practically fall asleep at dinner.

I grew up sitting in my closet waiting to go Narnia.

Sam and Dean Winchester sitting on the top of the Impala sharing their feelings over a beer is a reward worth driving any ‘Supernatural‘ demon away – but in real life, they’d have crippling co-dependency issues.

When you’re writing about superpowers, you’re writing about power. When you’re writing about immortals, you’re writing about mortality.

I understand that fictional men aren’t real. Not ‘really real’. I know this the same way I wonder if my readers are disappointed when they meet me.

We kept my middle schooler home from school for three days before we turned in our final draft because she was so mean and so brutal at editing out all the cheesy bits. She would roll her eyes and make fun of us, and it was what we needed.

Harper Lee was my David Bowie, and I feel her loss in my bones.

If you look at ‘Doctor Who,’ it’s a Time Lord in a blue box who travels around the universe. It’s a silly concept, but it’s one of the most brilliant, emotional experiences because it’s sort of about what is humanity.

Han Solo would never wear the earring Harrison Ford wears.

My solo novel ‘Icons‘ was optioned by Alcon Entertainment, the folks who made the ‘Beautiful Creatures‘ movie, and that’s gotten as far as a script, but no news yet.

I was very shy – I didn’t speak to anyone outside of my family until the fourth grade.

Anyone who says that writing for children or teens is easier than writing for adults has never tried it, because they are so much more critical than adults. You cannot get anything past them.

I worked in videogames for 16 years before writing my first book in 2009.

It doesn’t matter if it’s aliens or emotional weapons or whatever – it’s still a real story about big feelings that have to come out.

I was the person who stayed awake reading by the nightlight until the scary shadows made me crazy.

Getting books out into the world helps us all.

The privilege, and the challenges, of taking on Black Widow have never been lost on me. I worked on the first ‘Spiderman’ game as well as ‘Fantastic Four,’ and I had always wanted to be able to tell more of a character-driven comic book story than was possible to fit into a game narrative.

You need books to read and readers for books.

The Lowcountry traditionally is a logical place where the big ships stopped and brought new things in from the ocean, and the islands have a mystical tradition. It is such a visual place, too, with these iconic villages with the Spanish moss and the village and historical homes and the coast.

At heart, I would have to say I’m a pantser. I fully embrace the chaos of letting the unintended happen, on life and on the page.

Alden Ehrenreich is a drama nerd, and Alice Englert is indie girl. They’re so cool in the way that our characters are cool.

Everything I write is about big feelings. What I care about is trying to be brave enough to feel how you feel and to be emotionally true.

I was an obsessive fantasy reader from the time I could read at all.

I like to make an outline or cards and then utterly ignore them.

Everyone reads Harper Lee personally. For me, ‘Mockingbird‘ was about admitting my own hyphenated identity – about loving and hating my world, about both belonging and not belonging to the community I came from.

You better have your story down before you take it to a teenager.

Sometimes people who sell books are seen as corporate salesmen, and people who sell reading are seen as literacy advocates, but you can’t really separate the two.

There’s a lot of loneliness in a book tour. A lot of grilled cheese sandwiches alone in your hotel at night.

Writing is the easy part. The ‘getting it right‘ part is harder.

I fictionship. I love fictional men.

It’s like how science fiction in the ’50s was a way of talking about war without actually having to risk any political capital. The obvious metaphor is power and powerlessness, but I also think it’s a way of experimenting with dangerous feelings in a safe arena and trying things out.