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" You can't control what's going to happen to the book you're about to publish. "
Rumaan Alam
Control
Going
About
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" We have all come from a woman in some fashion. "
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Some
Come
Fashion
" Form ossifies into genre through repetition. "
Rumaan Alam
Repetition
Form
Through
" Truly smart people and truly smart dressers share one thing in common: They make it look easy. "
Rumaan Alam
Look
Easy
Smart
" 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
Balance
Parenting
Advice
" Shopping for clothes is time consuming, it's tiring, and it can feel like a waste of an autumn afternoon. "
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Shopping
Clothes
Time
" Baking is a matter of precision and timing, but I just make things up as I go. "
Rumaan Alam
Up
Baking
Timing
" 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
" The culture looms much larger than you do as a parent, and one can hardly rely on the culture to impart the lesson that womanhood is valuable. "
Rumaan Alam
You
Culture
Lesson
" Usually, when you see clothes on a model, by some transitive property, that garment is imbued with her beauty. "
Rumaan Alam
Her
Beauty
See
" I think it's a not-uncommon experience for gay boys, young men, and even older men to spend a lot of time in the company of women. "
Rumaan Alam
Time
Women
Men
" Time is a finite resource. "
Rumaan Alam
Resource
Finite
Time
" Family is whatever you say it is. "
Rumaan Alam
Whatever
You
Say
" 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
Go
Myself
Work
" 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
" 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
Beautiful
Learning
Life
" Nothing is ever ideal. You have to work all the same. "
Rumaan Alam
Nothing
You
Work
" A writer cannot be judged for his project, only its execution. "
Rumaan Alam
Execution
Cannot
Only
" 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
" Uzodinma Iweala is a fine and confident novelist. "
Rumaan Alam
Confident
Fine
Novelist
" Shot glasses make me think of youth and a mode of drinking and living that was never mine, even when I was the age for it. "
Rumaan Alam
Think
Glasses
Age
" Every Christmas, I cook an elaborate Mexican dinner. "
Rumaan Alam
Mexican
Every
Dinner
" 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
" 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
Enough
Performance
Attention
" 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
" That a friendship ends doesn't mean it was weak from the outset; that it ends says nothing about its importance. "
Rumaan Alam
About
Weak
Mean
" 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
Privilege
Conversation
Enough
" Everyone on Twitter - everyone on the Internet - seems so damn certain. Brevity doesn't allow for nuance, and it's a nice complement to confidence. "
Rumaan Alam
Damn
Seems
Nice
" Class is very, very fertile territory for American artists, and it has been for a long time. "
Rumaan Alam
Class
Long Time
Time
" 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 love fiction's ability to allow me to inhabit a wholly different life. "
Rumaan Alam
Life
Ability
Me