A biography for Rumaan Alamhasn’t been written yet.
“That's part of fashion's promise: that a girlfriend or boyfriend or a promotion are just one tie or sweater or pair of shoes away.”
“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.”
“I am a binge reader, with a tendency to throw myself at a writer, immerse myself in their work.”
“If you can't empathize with other people, then you will never really be able to write well about them.”
“Children are weird. I was going to say 'most children,' but I think this a rare universal law.”
“Fiction is just lying.”
“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.”
“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.”
“We have all come from a woman in some fashion.”
“If you've ever watched a television cartoon, you know that kids don't appreciate subtlety, though perhaps that's because they're not often offered it.”
“Shopping for clothes is time consuming, it's tiring, and it can feel like a waste of an autumn afternoon.”
“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.”
“Subtlety doesn't work with kids.”
“You can't control what's going to happen to the book you're about to publish.”
“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.”
“Vanity is a sensitive subject for gay men.”
“Uzodinma Iweala is a fine and confident novelist.”
“With respect to parenting, biological age is not, for men, the concern it is for women.”
“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.”
“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.”