Lgbt People

"You're still alive in alternate universes, Theo, but I live in the real world, where this morning you're having an open-casket funeral. I know you're out there, listening. And you should know I'm really pissed because you swore you would never die and yet here we are. It hurts even more because this isn't the first promise you've broken."

"You smile and return to Franklin's body. Maybe he's not exactly a dragon. Maybe you're not the angel your client believed you to be. But this life is still one of your own design, and that's the way you like it. You roll the Trance seed around your fist, imagining what life you'll design for him next. Every name he's worn so far will remain good and buried, but he's in excellent hands with you. The world knows this. You'll make a new name for him. And no one will remember the old ones."

"Hiding doesn't bother you. If believers never see God's face, why should they see yours?"

"And if bringing up the past annoys you now- as I know it did when you left New York for California- know that I'm sorry, but please don't be mad at me for reliving all of it. History is all you left me."

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that's all."

"You've made a name for yourself. And no one remembers the old one."

"The Death-Cast universe is my favorite universe that I've created. It was born out of my fear of unexpected death and has ultimately changed my perspective on life. I make bolder choices in my life, almost like I have nohing to lose, but I could definitely take more risks. One of the worst parts about creating this universe, though, is that I spend so much time in it, and it's not real! I truly wish Death-Cast existed, and I often have to remind myself that it doesn't."

"Robbie Couch: After meeting Paz and Alano as children in The First to Die at the End, readers got to follow their journey as teens in this book. What was the most exciting- or agonizing- aspect of writing each character? Adam Silvera: Okay, well, Paz Dario is the most Adam Silvera character I've written since Aaron Soto in More Happy Than Not. That was my debut novel, and it's not uncommon for a writer's first protagonist to be modeled after them and their life, but I definitely didn't expect to feel this connected to a character in my tenth novel. I haven't written a suicidal protagonist since Aaron, so to be doing it again a decade later with Paz definitely came with a lot of baggage, especially since my mental health was at a terrible low. This novel was so painful to write because it kept me locked in that headspace. Sometimes I'd write a scene and then I couldn't go back to the manuscript for days or, in a couple cases, weeks. This novel was ultimately therapeutic but, wow, so, so, so hard to write."

"Some people like ‘happily ever after,’ but I don’t think that’s me. I’m always writing from some difficult place and seeing how the character survives … or doesn’t. When I really want to be comforted myself what I look for is a story about how somebody could survive something really difficult. There are happy stories out there but I think some of them may raise false expectations for teens…"

"All stories that are centring queer kids and their experiences are all valid whether it’s dealing with the trials of having parents who aren’t as welcoming about it or parents who are totally chill about it, which is obviously the hope for all teenagers. I think there are some things that could be said too, especially culturally, like there’s a lot of stigma in the Puerto Rican community that fathers especially are so hyper masculine that they will always be uncomfortable with their children being gay…"

"I hear police sirens and keep pedaling. I hope something else is happening. I give it a few more minutes before I take a break, stopping between a McDonald's and a gas station. It's mad bright, maybe kneeling over here is stupid, but staying in plain sight might be a good hiding spot. I don't know, I'm not James Bond, I don't have some guidebook on how to hide from the bad guys. Shit, I'm the bad guy."

"I succeeded in making you care. If you feel nothing, I failed you as a storyteller. I love happy endings, but some readers need the darker stories, too. The stories that don’t make them feel disturbed by their own reality because it doesn’t reflect what they’re used to seeing in fiction. There’s some comfort in harsher stories, and witnessing how one character rebuilds after tragedy can provide hope for the reader."

"It's possible Mateo not being a daredevil will keep us alive longer, but I'm not banking on it being a memorable End Day."

"The other element was Paz's borderline personality disorder, which I modeled after my own experiences. I received my diagnosis in 2020, as if that year wasn't hard enough, and while I was strangely grateful to discover that my worldviews and behaviors were linked to a disorder instead of all my negative impulses and reactions being me and nothing but me, it was still really suffocating and made me feel powerless. What was extra hard about writing Paz's BPD is that while I have the perspective of someone who went through dialectical behavior therapy, Paz doesn't, so I had to keep forcing him to make the wrong choices since he's yet to learn how to self-regulate. It broke my heart and made me feel so cruel as the author, but it was important to make sure BPD was reflected accurately to help others better understand how the headspace of someone with the disorder might think. I love Paz so much and I feel so protective of him, which, in retrospect, became a big lesson for me because if I can love this fictional character so much, I needed to show my very real self that same love."

"Robbie Couch: A lot has changed since They Both Die at the End was published in 2017. How have the last eight years of real-world changes affected how you've written the series? Adam Silvera: I never thought I would get super political in this series, but as I was expending the world and creating the Death Guard and pro-natural ideologies, I couldn't help but draw from the information wars this country has been facing. I truly hated how easily it was to create a cult that hates the truth."

"I write sad stories for teenagers because young adults need to see that there is no such thing as a happy ending when you're that age. Because your life is more than your teenage years. And that when we say "It Gets Better" it doesn't mean "Everything Gets Solved." It means you will still carry the weight from when things weren't good, but you will be stronger for it the next time you're unhappy- and that time will come. I want to show the battles that people go through. And I can't think of a better way to show young people that you can be strong enough to survive and survive and survive and survive than to write a character who overcomes their darkness. I write sad stories so I can be a living, breathing example that someone who looks happy on the outside isn't always happy on the inside. I write sad stories because my own life is a story that's still going on."

"In order to write anything profile-driven, I would become the person; and then I would analyse the person from within. Earlier, I would analyse them from without. But if I was going to write about him now, I would do it internally, so then it would be fiction.”"

"I think it means where the artist doesn’t necessarily have a full understanding of something, but they have deep empathy. They have some kind of amazing empathy with the characters in the world. I just think it means being openhearted and generous. I think that to be a conscious person is to sort through stuff in order to understand not just yourself but how you feel in the world."

"I think I was just a very skinless person…And I had this terrible need to confess; and I still do it…It’s a bid to be loved, in some way."

"Since the rape, it has felt like I’ve faced an unimaginable battering – first in going to the police, being in front of officers who don’t understand you. Then when you say it publicly, there are people who don’t believe you, who mock you. Or there are people who believe it but say it’s your own fault. Before this, I had heard a lot of women talking about the fact they weren’t believed. And when History of Violence was published, I realised the full extent of what those women had gone through."

"I want to be a writer of violence…I think the more you talk about violence, the more you can undo violence…"

"The damage suffered by people I know and love is almost always based on the trauma of the only elder they had treating them badly or being interested only in their silence. And what you’re left with, by the grace of God and some miracle, is this inner self. Our experiences are painful and sometimes annihilating, and if we have the strength to crawl out of and excavate that wreckage, we have to ask ourselves how to describe the truth of it."

"We also have a fundamental right to not carry a pain that we did not choose. Whether you’re born black or gay or a woman or Jewish, you didn’t choose it. You have to be the person in charge of it saying your story, again and again. When it is something you are forced to recount, there’s something violent about it…"

"I'm dead set on living my one life right, but I can't say the same for my brother. No one's expecting Brighton to be full-grown when we turn eighteen at midnight, but he needs to step it up."

"Thank you for everything, Dad. I'll be brave, and I'll be okay. I love you from here to there. Mateo"

"It's storming outside right now. I stare out the window. I can't tell you if it rained yesterday or even what day it is. It always feels like I'm waking up, minute after minute, like I'm in my own little time zone. But as I trace my smiling scar- unable to do so without remembering the time Thomas poked two eyes onto my wrist with dirt- I still have hope in what Evangeline and Leteo hope for, too. And while I wait, happiness exists where I can get it. In these notebooks, where worlds of memories greet me, almost like a childhood friend who moved away for years and finally came back home. I'm more happy than not. Don't forget me."

"I don’t ever see any character as 100 percent good or 100 percent evil…"

"Even if I hated my childhood, I am nostalgic for it. How can it be possible? Probably because the past is—in a way—settled. I think that childhood is a moment where the world is growing every day. Every day the world is bigger, reality is bigger, reality is deeper. When you become an adult, everything shrinks. You realize that the world is smaller and smaller, and people's minds are not as big as you thought."

"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live."

"Twelve hours ago I received a phone call telling me I'm going to die today. In my own Mateo way, I've said tons of goodbyes already, to my dad, best friend, and goddaughter, but the most important goodbye is the one I said to Past Mateo, who I left behind at home when my Last Friend accompanied me into a world that has it out for us. Rufus has done so much for me and I'm here to help him confront any demons following him- except we can't whip out any flaming swords or crosses that double as throwing stars like in fantasy books. His company has helped me and maybe mine will help him through any heartache too. Twelve hours ago I received the phone call telling me I'm going to die today, and I'm more alive than I've ever been."

"I drink every last drop of Reaper's Blood while looking up at the Crowned Dreamer. The elixir smells like burning bodies and tastes like iron and charcoal. The blood from the century phoenix, the golden-strand hydra, and the dead ghosts is heavy on my tongue like mud. My throat is burning and I'm this close to spitting out the rest, but I force myself to swallow it because this Reaper's Blood is game changing. I wasn't lucky enough to be born with powers- to be born a celestial. But now that I've absorbed these creature's abilities, the world will get to welcome me as their new champion- a one-of-a-kind, unkillable specter."

"Books don’t have a nutritional value. Which is to say, we don’t just read "good" books because they’re good for us. We read to expand our horizons, to understand and connect with something outside ourselves, good and bad. We read to challenge ourselves…"

"Comics allow you to really subtly do those different perspectives without necessarily telling you explicitly what anyone is thinking, just what they’re saying or what they’re doing, which is incredibly valuable I think in storytelling."

"My primary identity as a kid was being rejected by American society—because you’re from another country, you can’t possibly be American—and my parents’ identity more as being Chinese, so I saw myself as Chinese…"

"A lot of Asian American parents are sort of like, Oh, Why’d you stick your neck out? You’re really going to get—you’ll be the nail that sticks out, then you’ll get hammered down. You’ll bring trouble to yourself and to your family. And you know, that’s not really the way it works. It’s really the more you speak up, the more possibility [you have] for making a difference, for making a change, instead of suffering in silence. It’s the only way—especially in a democracy—it’s the only way to improve conditions in your community, to make it better…"

"Definitely if I am writing something that feels completely straight, I’ll sew some queerness in there, because queerness is always there. It’s like when you’re writing a cityscape, you need to write in the characters that would be there. To me, not doing that is more of a choice."

"U.S. history and China's history are very, very deeply - and in a complicated way - intertwined with each other over a few hundred years. And so there were times when that relationship was fraught with tension. But there were also times of great friendship…"

"We do our characters a disservice by allowing them to be flat. Our role as novelists is to do our best to portray the nuance of a whole range of life experiences. It's one of the things that fiction is uniquely positioned to do, to bring the reader into the interior life of people’s experiences that are wildly different than our own…"

"There is a saying that an injustice to one is an injustice to all. No one is truly equal and free until everyone is equal and free. When a society allows anyone to be treated as less than equal and therefore less than fully human, we not only rob those people of their full humanity, we also become complicit in their mistreatment. Sometimes people think they can look the other way as long as “their group” isn’t harmed. But that is an illusion because we are all connected by our humanity, and as history has proven over and over again, harsh and autocratic power will inevitably spread like cancer to maintain itself…"

"I try to write to the story, as opposed to writing for the reader…"

"I think levity and humor can be used to tackle larger themes that are darker. Loneliness can be damaging, but when you’re feeling lonely, you do some of your most productive thinking. I wanted to show the idea of loneliness in that light – that humor works in tandem with the joy to be found in self-examination."

"One thing that I came to learn about myself as a writer in working on this book is that my writing is often about who is happening moreso than what is happening. That is, I love creating characters who feel very true-to-life but who are almost so specific as to be mysteries to themselves as they are to other people."

"Grafting solitude onto a character who would live it on the page seemed to provide me with a sense of catharsis."

"In all my work, the things I’m invested in are empathy and compassion and trying to put human experiences on the page that I haven’t read before."

"Nonfiction is supposed to drive home a point. In fiction, you need more nuance, buried in layers. There is character development and plot, and that switch can be tricky. I really like writing short stories, and I wish they were more popular..."

"Nonreaders. Especially Nonreaders of Color. Which I didn’t even realize until so many of them started contacting me. I write for them because I think it’s important to read, and yet I also understand that when you’ve never really seen yourself if the type of stuff you’re assigned, reading seems kinda wack [sic]. So I wanna hook the reluctants and get them started reading for enjoyment.…"

"Writing can be a way of honoring those who’ve suffered real traumas and often surmounted them. And when a story has not yet been fully reflected in formal histories, the telling has a purpose, or so we hope…"

"The dialogue. I love writing dialogue and using that particular element of narrative to draw out the heart of a story because storytelling as a discipline really began with speech—stories orally passed down, generation to generation. Dialogue is just my most favorite thing. In all the stuff I’ve written actually."

"At some point, the novelist has to leap head first into the pool of imagination in order to more freely explore the truth."

"As a Rioplatense person of European decent, I feel strongly about the urgency of retelling the stories of our nation’s histories, the Argentinian and Uruguayan national stories and cultural stories, in ways that fully recognize the presence of black people. Which is a huge part of the greater story of the Americas as well. You cannot tell the story of the Americas without the story of black people and the transatlantic slave trade — that mass atrocity. Alongside, of course, the genocide of indigenous people. And also the cultural richness and artistic production and stories of resilience and power that, too, come out of those harsh realities that are at the origin of the Americas."