Naomi Alderman

“One of the hardest challenges posed by the modern world is how to deal with abundance. It's even harder to confront because admitting that it's a problem seems spoiled.”

“No one in tech has ever been as sexist toward me as teachers and rabbis before I was 12 years old.”

“I have a suspicion of lockstep and everyone looking in the same direction: that's a key character trait in me.”

“After the novel was published, I came to feel that I couldn't call myself Orthodox anymore. It's so patriarchal, anti-women, anti-gay. There was something about writing 'Disobedience'... it felt like I had put it all in the book. I had done my best by it, recorded what it meant for me. I felt I was done.”

“One of them says, 'Why did they do it?'And the other answers, 'Because they could.'That is the only answer there ever is.”

“For years, I looked down on my mother for shopping at Asda, and now I feel very ashamed of it.”

“For millennia, human beings have been finding new ways to look at the world through each others' eyes: from projecting ourselves onto the characters in novels or movies to dressing up in costume to devouring the details of some celebrity's life in 'Hello' or 'OK.'”

“I grew up an Orthodox Jew, and now I'm not an Orthodox Jew. So I have sympathy for people who lose their faith.”

“I was incredibly inspired by Oprah Winfrey as a young woman.”

“The thing about the Lexington International Bank ladder was that it was very long, and climbing it was very exhausting, and so Andrew Brown didn't have a lot of time to think about whether he really wanted to get to the top of it—and besides, since so many other people were climbing too, the view from the top must be worth it.So he kept going. He worked hard. He put his heart and mind and soul into it. There was an opening for a position half a rung higher than he already was. With a promotion, he might get two hours a week of a secretary's time. He'd go to more important meetings, with more senior people, and have the opportunity to impress them, and if he did he might be promoted again and then... well, of course eventually he'd be running the whole office. It's important to have a dream: otherwise you might notice where you really are.”

“No human quality belongs to only one class of person. We all get to be both aggressive and loving. We all get to delight in our careers and revel in our children. We're all kind and brave, soft and hard, sciency and artsy, interested in being looked at and in admiring others' physical form. Everything.”

“I hate to be one of those people who forwards links to 'hilarious pictures' or 'brilliant games' to half their contacts database.”

“The species will continue, whatever apocalypse we manage to unleash. It just won't be much fun to live through.”

“The demands of having to be 'masculine' are as damaging to men as the demands of having to be 'feminine' are to women. I wish we could all agree just to wash it all away. Begin again.”

“I have no wish to offend, but I do think that holy cows need challenging.”

“Just as readers often turn into writers, novel-writers often become novel-reviewers.”

“In general, I'd rather ask questions and look stupid than keep quiet and not understand what someone's talking about.”

“Too many keep-fit ideas are designed for those who are already fit, and they're just no fun.”

“Sometimes you feel like the people who invest in hate are winning. Then you just want to talk about love and what it really means to love yourself.”

“I've always had a real interest in the way that science fiction can portray a world that could be different to our world, which I find a really exciting thought.”