A society manufactures the heroes it requires.

For years I felt that I wasn't ready to take on slavery. It's a huge topic, and I didn't want to mess it up.

I didn't have to do that much research to present a post-apocalyptic New York because I basically grew up in that New York. That old New York is gone, and that's one thing that's undiscoverable now but I explore in my fiction.

New York City does not hold our former selves against us. Perhaps we can extend the same courtesy.

A lot of people, when they first hear about the Underground Railroad, think it really is a subway or a locomotive. When they find out it's not, they feel a little disappointed. So I thought, What if it was a literal underground train network traveling from state to state, with each state it goes through representing a different opportunity or danger?

A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.

Memory is the most malicious cutter of all, preserving, recasting, panning in slow motion across the awful bits so that we retain every detail.