111 Quotes by Rumaan Alam

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?

I am not anti-Internet, and I don't think smart phones are a social ill.

A writer cannot be judged for his project, only its execution.

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.

Uzodinma Iweala is a fine and confident novelist.

I reject the notion that one should feel guilty about what you don't know.

It comforts the adult conscience to remember that, amid history's grave injustices, there were still great lives.

History is a story like any other, but black history is a story so devoid of logic that it frustrates the young reader. The young readers in my house, told of slavery and segregation, asked in disbelief, 'What? Why?' We - the parents of black children, the parents of all children - still need to tell that story.

I work when I work, and that is often dictated by the things I cannot control.