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.

The script for what would eventually become my first graphic novel, 'Cairo,' sort of came to me in kind of a bolt of lightning within 24 hours of having moved to that city. Just a jumble of characters and narratives and interesting things that I was seeing and experiencing for the first time.

I tend to deal with characters who are sort of at that same point of wrestling with, 'Who am I going to be as an adult? What do I believe? How am I defining myself in the context of my culture and my peer groups, my family?'

In Arab Islamic society, it is traditionally taboo to criticize the lifestyle or personal philosophy of any practicing Muslim.

'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.

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.

I do hope the success of 'Ms. Marvel' will open doors for other characters and other creators.

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.'

There is a certain danger in thinking about diversity in its own little box, as something that is somehow separate from 'normal' comic books and comics creators.

We think of divinity as something infinitely big, but it is also infinitely small - the condensation of your breath on your palms, the ridges in your fingertips, the warm space between your shoulder and the shoulder next to you.

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

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.

For me, insomnia was something ordinary, and it came and went for ordinary reasons.

The Qur'an is in many ways far less concrete than the Bible, relying on the esoteric more often than the apparent.

An ambitious, surreal tale of the love between a young Arab girl sold into marriage and the orphan boy she adopts, 'Habibi' spans multiple eras of conflict and change, stretching the lifetimes of its two protagonists over many centuries.

The Qur'an is God's property, not mine.

Most people know Muslims in their community but don't realize it.

In all likelihood, you've been treated by a Muslim doctor or served by a Muslim waiter or worked beside a Muslim computer programmer. Even if you think, 'I don't know any Muslims,' it's probably not true.

Muslims are ordinary members of the working public, just like you.

I don't think being a writer who is religious means you have to write about nothing but religion. When I do write about religion, it's to inform the story, not to push a certain agenda.

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

There are very religious people who write comics and who love comics.

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.

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

Islam is antiauthoritarian, sex-positive monotheism.

Comic book readers tend to be pretty secular and anti-authoritarian; nothing is above satire in their eyes.

My career is a black comedy of sorts. I spent a lot of time explaining myself to various different groups. But more and more, I'm finding that the desire to communicate, which all these audiences share, is a powerful thing.

Real tolerance means respecting other people even when they baffle you and you have no idea why they think what they think.

The story of a passionate woman in a stale marriage is as old as Helen of Troy.

Out-marriage is an issue religious groups have been wrestling with for some time. Of course men and women fall in love. Of course it's not always convenient to their respective cultural and spiritual norms.

As a person, I'm just trying to be better than I was yesterday and continue to elevate.

I'd rather have quality over quantity. It's about perfecting each song and making sure it's what you want to do. And then even with what I share it's all very strategic.

I go to my mom's house and she'll make me do the dishes or clean up.

Some people, they make these assumptions before they even listen to the music.

To live your truth and sing your truth, that defines success.

I always feel like we focus too much on image and the flashiness of what it means to be an artist.

I never really thought of myself as someone who was gifted.

We live in an era of social media. We care more about looks, popularity and followers than about real music. And I wanted to get away from that.

Sometimes it's all about hype, and I didn't want hype.

I want women to really feel how honest and vulnerable I am and to understand that they are not alone and that these are all human emotions.

I just love music, and that's what I want people to see and respect.

I really just wanted it to be about the music, and get away from, 'Who is she with?' and 'What is she wearing?'

Whether you know who I am or not, you don't really know who I am.

It's a great thing to hear people putting me up to this standard and putting me on this pedestal and expecting greatness from me, but at the end of the day, I'm just trying to be a better me as an artist musically.

It's not a popularity contest to me. It should always be about the music.

I'm always thinking about Prince when I make my music and how genre-less he was and just how versatile and amazing he was on the stage. I'm so inspired by him.

I wanted people to just accept the music for what it is without any judgement and being anonymous was the best way to do that.

People have always tried to imitate, but at the end of the day, no one can do me better than I can do me, you know?

I've been writing since I was five years old. I used to write poetry, and I loved to rhyme.

As a black woman, I've always had to work hard to earn my respect as a musician - and as a young woman, too. As a writer, in certain sessions or certain rooms people think, 'Who's kid is this? Who's this little girl?' I've had to prove myself.