The great thing about Cairo is the vast majority of women wear some kind of head scarf, but they are also very fashion-conscious. They love bright colors.

That's something the head scarf, in a symbolic way, is meant to do in Arabic culture: it defines your relationship to your husband and the men of your family differently than your relationship to the average guy on the street you've never met.

I think people, especially in the Muslim community, are rightly cautious any time you hear, 'Oh, there's going to be a Muslim character.'

People love to talk about new and different. They don't always love to buy and read new and different.

As a writer and a mom, I wish I could split into two or three different people so I could be with my kids all day, write all day, and go out and do the interviews all day. Multiplicity woman!

When you write for a comic series, many superheroes have 60 or some years of history that you are coming into.

Superheroes don't often get their powers in one fell swoop. It's like superhero puberty.

When I need guidance or just to kvetch or to bounce ideas off of people, I go to Gail Simone, who is very much kind of the den mother of all of us who are working comics.

Being a Muslim in America, I've noticed that there's a ton of crossover between the Muslim community and geekdom.

I write about real life as it is lived by the young American Muslim women that I've had the pleasure of meeting throughout the course of my travels as a writer and being able to speak in different places and meet different people at signings and things.

Despite all the criticisms that have been leveled at the comics community, both in terms of fans and creators, I have always felt more comfortable and accepted in the comics community than I have in any other medium of publishing that I've had the pleasure of working in.

I didn't believe in spiritual homelands, and found God as readily in a strip mall as in a mosque.

'Butterfly Mosque' came out of the emails I wrote to family and friends back home after moving to Egypt.

'Habibi' is a complex and unapologetic work of fantasy - no idle undertaking for readers of any faith or no faith at all, but one well worth the trouble.

I have younger friends who are in this pinch where they feel they've been counted out before they've had a chance to prove themselves. They've inherited a lot of debt - not just student debt but environmental debt, political debt. They really feel squeezed.

I discovered I was a monotheist... That rules out polytheism. I have also had a problem with authority, which rules out any religion with a priesthood or leader who claims to be God's representative on Earth.

Some languages expand not only your ability to speak to different people but what you're able to think.

I was born in New Jersey and lived there until I was about 10, so Jersey is in my roots.

For most inhabitants of the Arab world, the prevailing cultural attitude toward women - fed and encouraged by Wahhabi doctrine, which is based on Bedouin social norms rather than Islamic jurisprudence - often trumps the rights accorded to women by Islam.

My synesthesia is mostly gone - it was a much bigger factor when I was a kid. But having no depth perception is a bonus when you're trying to lay out flat images and describe them to an artist - flat is all I see.

I don't know that Islam has ever been a subject of anything that I've written. I think Muslims have often been, but those are two very different things.

In comics, we're all weird together. I can go to a comics convention and not stand out, even though I'm the only woman in a headscarf there, because the guy next to me has a beard and a Sailor Moon costume.

'Air' is what the world looks like: An inconvenient mashup of human politics and divine geography. We leave bits and pieces of ourselves and our history in every place we encounter.

Choosing a spouse with religion in mind is not always a mistake, especially if your heritage and your faith are important parts of who you are. The trick is, as always, to recognize a good thing when you see it - and never mistake the bad for something more.