Quotes by Rumaan Alam - Page 2

Does a bona fide chimichurri have cilantro in it? Who cares? Cooking for your family, unless your family includes Joel Rubouchon, is liberating in that regard.
Rumaan Alam /
Liberating
Regard
Who Cares
Bona
Bona Fide
Cares
Copy Quote
I have a theory that because my kitchen is small, you can't preheat an oven and deal with dough at the same time, although maybe it's just that I'm a bad baker.
Rumaan Alam /
Dough
Baker
Oven
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Children's picture books are a unique record of social evolution: in gender roles and racial politics, as is much discussed, but also in fashion and interior design.
Rumaan Alam /
Picture Books
Discussed
Interior
Racial
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For many writers, the endless performance of being a writer - tweeting, appearing, making the rounds - is required simply to attract enough attention to make a living.
Rumaan Alam /
Appearing
Rounds
Attract
Tweeting
Required
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There are probably some readers who don't want a great American writer to acknowledge that cleaning out the bottom drawer of the refrigerator has ever crossed their mind.
Rumaan Alam /
Acknowledge
Bottom
Cleaning
Great American
Crossed
Drawer
Refrigerator
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Men's fashion's tendency toward uniformity promises little fun, but at least it offers this: If I wear sweatpants and sneakers, I can pass as the American it's safest to be.
Rumaan Alam /
Fashion
Fun
Offers
Sneakers
Uniformity
Wear
Least
Pass
Promises
Safest
Tendency
Toward
Copy Quote
Because the designers at Baby Gap and Crew Cuts have determined it would be cute if kids dressed like their dads, seemingly every American male between 2 and 52 dresses identically.
Rumaan Alam /
Cute
Crew
Determined
Cuts
Dads
Designers
Dressed
Every American
Gap
Seemingly
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Wishing there were more children's books like 'The Snowy Day' is a bit like wishing there were more grownup books like 'Anna Karenina.' There are only so many masterpieces out there.
Rumaan Alam /
Anna
Grownup
Masterpieces
Wishing
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The cultural conversation around privilege has grown vibrant enough that the ultimate privilege is to just ignore it altogether. Some decry this conversation as pernicious. I don't agree.
Rumaan Alam /
Pernicious
Altogether
Ignore
Vibrant
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Checking your phone during dinner is no less rude than reading 'People' during dinner, which I once saw a woman do at Blue Ribbon Brooklyn as she dined with her husband/boyfriend/whatever.
Rumaan Alam /
Blue
Brooklyn
Checking
Dined
Ribbon
Copy Quote
Blackness, any sort of difference, is not a burden. Relegating blackness or other sorts of difference to serious books that explicitly engage with issues creates a context in which it can seem like one.
Rumaan Alam /
Blackness
Burden
Context
Creates
Explicitly
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Lindsay Hatton's novel 'Monterey Bay' so beautifully evokes the landscape of the titular locale, you'll feel transported to Northern California even if you're reading it on the bus on your morning commute.
Rumaan Alam /
Landscape
Northern California
Bay
Beautifully
Commute
Lindsay
Northern
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My husband and I adopted our children through a private agency, Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children. As a nonprofit organization, it relies on client fees as well as donor support to do its work.
Rumaan Alam /
Adopted
Agency
Fees
Client
Donor
Nonprofit
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Years ago, I worked at a fashion magazine. I was the lowest man on the totem pole, one of the only men on that particular pole: a little brother with a dozen older sisters whose grace and glamour I so admired.
Rumaan Alam /
Dozen
Glamour
Grace
Little Brother
Lowest
Admired
Sisters
Magazine
Pole
Totem
Totem Pole
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I'm a square. I always wanted the standard-issue American dream: beautiful home, loving husband, couple of kids. I met another square, and we got married; a year later, we had a baby; three years later, had another.
Rumaan Alam /
American Dream
Beautiful Home
Square
Year Later
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It's not that a literature for children of color doesn't exist; it's that so much of the extant literature is lacking in the essential quality that makes literature for children so extraordinary a form: imagination.
Rumaan Alam /
Lacking
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There is a tendency to presume autobiography in fiction by women or minorities. Guys named Jonathan write universal stories, while there's this sense that everyone else is just fictionalizing their own small experiences.
Rumaan Alam /
Autobiography
Minorities
Named
Everyone Else
Jonathan
Presume
Tendency
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Parenting advice is mostly useless because every family is uniquely its own; artistic advice is mostly useless because every artist works in their own way. Thus, figuring out how to balance the two has an intense specificity.
Rumaan Alam /
Family
Parenting
Advice
Artist
Balance
Intense
Specificity
Two
Useless
Works
Figuring
Mostly
Thus
Uniquely
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I've spent many hours of my life browsing in stores. At 21, I admired clothes I couldn't afford. At 30, I bought them. At 40, I sometimes go simply for the pleasure, of seeing what is new, of learning what counts as beautiful now.
Rumaan Alam /
Stores
Admired
Counts
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When you are what we call a 'minority writer,' a writer of color, a writer of any kind of difference, there is some kind of presumption of autobiography in everything you produce. And I find that really maddening, and I resist that.
Rumaan Alam /
Autobiography
Presumption
Maddening
Minority
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I didn't know, at 22, that regret is useless. If I could go back and change something - give myself some big break, pass along some secret information, reassure myself that most things would, in fact, work out - I don't think I would.
Rumaan Alam /
Break
If I Could
Information
Regret
Secret
Useless
Work Out
Change Work Myself
Big Break
In Fact
Pass
Reassure
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Before the arrival of my first son, I gave up on the moribund business of magazine publishing, where I had long dreamed of a career, and went to work in advertising. That I could be paid great money to write was incredibly hard to believe.
Rumaan Alam /
Advertising
Publishing
Work Business Money
Arrival
Dreamed
Magazine
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It's my own personal hang-up, but I find adults who are picky eaters to be the worst. I don't mean food allergies or preferences: I mean picky eaters. We all know one, and they're impossible to go to lunch with or invite over for a dinner party.
Rumaan Alam /
Dinner Party
Lunch
Picky
Invite
Preferences
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When my husband and I first became parents, we joked that our chubby baby was destined to grow into an Alex P. Keaton Reaganite - the most unlikely, and therefore hilarious, course for the child of an interracial gay couple in gentrifying Brooklyn.
Rumaan Alam /
Hilarious
Alex
Brooklyn
Couple
Destined
Husband
Unlikely
Chubby
Therefore
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I married the man I love when the state of California said I could. We made a family through adoption, as New York State said we could. From the outside, our family - two dads, two sons via adoption - seems like an experiment, but what family isn't an experiment?
Rumaan Alam /
Adoption
New York State
Love Family Man
Dads
Experiment
Sons
Via
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Contemporary families can be made in many ways. You might step up when relatives or friends are unable to meet their obligation to their children. You might marry someone who is already a parent. Or you might, as in my case, yearn to create a family and decide to adopt.
Rumaan Alam /
Contemporary
Obligation
Adopt
Marry
Relatives
Unable
Yearn
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This tension between ambition and parenthood, that's not a reckoning that many men face. There are plenty of men who say, 'Oh, I need to be there for my kids, and I can't do x or y professionally,' but for the most part, that's a struggle that belongs to women in society.
Rumaan Alam /
Parenthood
Reckoning
Tension
Men Women Society
Belongs
Women Men Society
Professionally
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When we had our first son, four different people gave us the same present: a copy of Ezra Jack Keats' 'The Snowy Day.' A new child often inspires duplicate gifts - we were given a dozen mostly useless baby blankets, just one more thing to spit up on - but this one was different.
Rumaan Alam /
Dozen
Duplicate
Just One
Spit
Day People New
Blankets
Copy
Different People
Gifts
Inspires
Jack
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I do think that I have a sensitivity to the depictions of maybe all minorities in literature. And I think that the experience of people who look like me is so rarely captured in big, mainstream American fiction that you tend to sort of empathize with any character of color who pops up.
Rumaan Alam /
Captured
Minorities
Pops
Sensitivity
Experience Character Me
Empathize
Rarely
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Obama-as-dad is my favorite Obama. Obama-as-executive, with his stubborn faith in reasonableness in times absent of reason, presided over the country during its descent into madness. I find it a comfort that Obama-as-dad presided over a family that leaves the White House healthy and happy.
Rumaan Alam /
Absent
Comfort
Descent
Madness
White House
Leaves
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Among this country's enduring myths is that success is virtuous, while the wealth by which we measure success is incidental. We tell ourselves that money cannot buy happiness, but what is incontrovertible is that money buys stuff, and if stuff makes you happy, well, complete the syllogism.
Rumaan Alam /
Happiness
Happy
Country
Stuff
Virtuous
Wealth
Happiness Success Money
Among
Buy
Complete
Enduring
Incidental
Incontrovertible
Makes
Measure
Myths
Well
Success Is
Tell
While
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To be five years old is to be surprised by life. I'm amused by my children's awe at quotidian things - a toy helicopter, a bubble bath, the visible tentacles on a plate of calamari. And I'm envious of their ability to attain something I often can't: a state of transcendence induced by art.
Rumaan Alam /
Amused
Awe
Envious
Visible
Attain
Bath
Bubble
Helicopter
Induced
Plate
Surprised
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I don't want the staggeringly wealthy Elton John and his family to represent the standard of gay fatherhood any more than straight people want the stunningly beautiful Angelina Jolie and her family to represent the standard of heterosexual parenthood. Stars are outliers; stars are exceptions.
Rumaan Alam /
Fatherhood
Parenthood
Angelina Jolie
Elton
Elton John
Exceptions
Heterosexual
Standard
Straight People
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Is deciding what you like an instinct, a sense that arrives as swiftly as my autoimmune response to cat dander? Or is it the result of reasoned consideration, the way wine tasters swish pinot noir around in their mouths, spit it out, and reach for complex metaphors about chocolate and tobacco?
Rumaan Alam /
Cat
Chocolate
Consideration
Instinct
Mouths
Noir
Response
Spit
Tobacco
Wine
Complex
Deciding
Metaphors
Reach
Result
Swiftly
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I think that in the cultural imagination, motherhood has a primacy that fatherhood just doesn't; and that's not to say that there aren't many fathers who are active and engaged and for whom that is their life's passion. But somehow, in the imagination, there's something different about maternity.
Rumaan Alam /
Engaged
Fatherhood
Maternity
Motherhood
Primacy
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Instead of a passion for the Yankees or fly-fishing or birding, I want to pass on to my sons a love of books, music, and art. I accept that this is partly about the gratification of my own ego, but it's also one of the only ways I know of making a rich life. That's what we all want for our progeny.
Rumaan Alam /
Gratification
My Own
Progeny
Rich
Yankees
Life Love Art
Accept
Books
Instead
Partly
Sons
Ways
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One of the many American ideals that make no sense at all is that we're all a million rugged individualists marching in lockstep. We dress accordingly, at least the men. If it's always been thus, I yearn for the halcyon days of the man in the gray flannel suit because at least that guy had some flair.
Rumaan Alam /
Flair
Gray
Guy
Ideals
Rugged
Accordingly
Men Always Man
Days
Men Man Always
Individualist
Least
Marching
Million
No Sense
Suit
Thus
Yearn
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I always like it when writers posit writing as an act of empathy. It's such a grand turn of phrase, such a noble ideal; empathy is so worth aiming for in life that the same must hold true in art. But personally, I can't think too deeply about that when I'm working, or I'd never get anything down on the page.
Rumaan Alam /
Noble
Life Art Always
Aiming
Grand
Ideal
Phrase
Copy Quote
When you are young, it's deeply annoying to be told that certain things are a condition of your youth. There's almost always some condescension in the proposition that your reality, your hopes, your frustrations, are just a condition of your age, that what feels unique to you is a very common thing after all.
Rumaan Alam /
Annoying
Condition
Certain Things
Frustrations
Hopes
Proposition
Copy Quote
History is a story like any other, but black history is a story so devoid of logic that it frustrates the young reader. The young readers in my house, told of slavery and segregation, asked in disbelief, 'What? Why?' We - the parents of black children, the parents of all children - still need to tell that story.
Rumaan Alam /
History
Black
Black History
Disbelief
House
Logic
Reader
Segregation
Young
Why
Asked
Devoid
Frustrate
Parents
Tell
Copy Quote
Writing takes gall. I like to think that's true even for writers with several books under their belt, writers who have been doing it for years. It takes something - guts, gumption, self-delusion - to ask for a reader's time when we all know there's nothing new under the sun; that it's all been said, or written, before.
Rumaan Alam /
Guts
Nothing New
Self Delusion
Belt
Gall
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In a strange way, Louise Erdrich is perhaps our least famous great American writer; she is not reclusive, but she is reticent, and her public appearances give the impression of a carefully controlled performance. But Erdrich has also shared many of her most intimate emotions and experiences, in some form, in her novels.
Rumaan Alam /
Famous
Great American
Impression
Intimate
Strange
Appearances
Carefully
Experiences
Performance
Louise
Perhaps
Reclusive
Shared
Strange Way
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Kids are the ultimate trump card: a way to get out of co-op board meetings or lunch with a friend you don't want to see or your brother-in-law's set at a comedy club. It's fair to use your kids as an excuse to sidestep what you don't want to do; it's less fair to blame them for not being able to achieve what you do want to do.
Rumaan Alam /
Achieve
Blame
Brother In Law
Comedy
Excuse
Lunch
Meetings
Trump
Ultimate
Board
Card
Friend
Club
Fair
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I grew up in the D.C. suburbs, and what I like about that place is that there's not a strong regional affect in the cultural imagination like there is in Dallas or San Francisco or New York City. You have a little more freedom as a novelist this way. The suburbs become a generic idea, and the place doesn't intrude into the narrative.
Rumaan Alam /
Dallas
Generic
Narrative
New York City
San Francisco
Affect
Francisco
Intrude
Regional
San
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