Angie Thomas: "It was really hard. At first it felt like there were a thousand eyes looking over my shoulder at every line that I wrote. It was as if they were saying, ‘Starr wouldn’t say that.’ I had to get in the mindset of, ‘Well, Brianna would say it.’ I had to follow the advice that I give aspiring writers all the time: 'Write for yourself, first and foremost. Not for potential readers, not for a movie. Write it because it’s the book you want to walk into a bookstore and read one day.' I had a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, it’s set in Garden Heights! That means we’ll get to see Starr.’ I had to get to the point of saying, ‘No. Since it’s not something I want to do, I'm not going to do it.’ I tell my readers all the time: 'I wasn’t thinking about y’all. I love y’all, but I wasn't think about y’all. I had to write it for me.'”