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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
That a friendship ends doesn’t mean it was weak from the outset; that it ends says nothing about its importance. Rumaan Alam Read Quote
If writing really is empathy, then understanding your place in society might actually help you achieve it. Rumaan Alam Read Quote
I mourn for the kind of dad I didn’t have; I rue my first broken family while taking joy in the one that I’ve made. Rumaan Alam Read Quote
One of the many American ideals that make no sense at all is that we’re all a million rugged individualists marching in lockstep. We dress accordingly, at least the men. If it’s always been thus, I yearn for the halcyon days of the man in the gray flannel suit because at least that guy had some flair. Rumaan Alam Read Quote
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 Read Quote
