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 Read Quote
When I look at the list of my favorite works, writers who are women do tend to outnumber writers who are men for whatever reason. Rumaan Alam Read Quote
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 Read Quote
If you can’t empathize with other people, then you will never really be able to write well about them. Rumaan Alam Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Summer is meant to be for travel, for exploration, for leisure, but sometimes budgets and schedules dictate otherwise. Rumaan Alam Read Quote
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 Read Quote
