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" With respect to parenting, biological age is not, for men, the concern it is for women. "
Rumaan Alam
Respect
Parenting
Men
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" 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. "
Rumaan Alam
Shoes
Sweater
Fashion
" 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
You
" 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
Color
Call
You
" 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
People
Present
Son
" 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
Writing
Art
Life
" 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
Imagination
Strong
New York
" 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
Lunch
Dinner
Know
" It is true for my family and many others: Adoption has made us infinitely richer in the ways that matter most. "
Rumaan Alam
Us
Family
Matter
" 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
Art
Ego
Passion
" Time is a finite resource. "
Rumaan Alam
Resource
Finite
Time
" Summer is meant to be for travel, for exploration, for leisure, but sometimes budgets and schedules dictate otherwise. "
Rumaan Alam
Sometimes
Travel
Exploration
" 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
Baby
American
" We have all come from a woman in some fashion. "
Rumaan Alam
Some
Come
Fashion
" 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
American
Famous
Great
" 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. "
Rumaan Alam
Television
Appreciate
Know
" 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
Reading
Blue
People
" Children's books deal in idealized worlds, so they're a document of how our notion of ideal worlds has changed over time. "
Rumaan Alam
Books
Time
Over
" 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
Reality
Unique
Young
" 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
Own
Women
Everyone
" I work when I'm alone, but I have children and a family and a job, so alone time is at a premium. "
Rumaan Alam
Alone
Family
Job
" For a long time, I thought that I was an enlightened parent by virtue of being an enlightened person. What a fool. "
Rumaan Alam
Time
Parent
Being
" Form ossifies into genre through repetition. "
Rumaan Alam
Repetition
Form
Through
" I love fiction's ability to allow me to inhabit a wholly different life. "
Rumaan Alam
Life
Ability
Me
" Baking is a matter of precision and timing, but I just make things up as I go. "
Rumaan Alam
Up
Baking
Timing
" I know I've had a charmed experience of being a parent, with healthy kids, a helpful partner, access to good day care, and great public schools. "
Rumaan Alam
Good
Great
Good Day
" 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
Think
Experience
People
" 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
Men
Promises
American
" 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
Like
Difference
Burden
" Shopping for clothes is time consuming, it's tiring, and it can feel like a waste of an autumn afternoon. "
Rumaan Alam
Shopping
Clothes
Time
" 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
Bubble
Old
Life