Top 30 Rumaan Alam Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “She likes the frisson of improvisation. Fun cannot be scheduled. Fun simply occurs.”

— Rumaan Alam

2. “You never know when a time is the last time, because if you did you could never go on with life.”

— Rumaan Alam

3. “They were too young to appreciate the luck and chance that goes into making a person.”

— Rumaan Alam

4. “Rebecca didn’t know what was the better luck: to have a bad parent you’re ever trying to outperform or a good one to whom you can never hope to catch up.”

— Rumaan Alam

5. “Just reviewing this list, these to-dos and dones, her pace quickens; she feels lighter, she feels smarter, she feels in control, she feels alive.”

— Rumaan Alam

6. “The television has done something to us. To human beings. We can see so much, but maybe we weren’t made to see this much. Maybe it’s too much.”

— Rumaan Alam

7. “His manners are old-fashioned, the work of a vigilant mother.”

— Rumaan Alam

8. “The ice tinkles prettily: There’s no more inviting sound to her, it’s sophistication, like a British accent or that call-and-response of high-heeled shoes on tile.”

— Rumaan Alam

9. “It’s the right thing to do.” Clay knew this would work; his wife felt it important, not to do the moral thing, necessarily, but to be the kind of person who would. Morality was vanity, in the end.”

— Rumaan Alam

10. “Of course they’d never heard a noise like that before. You didn’t hear such a noise; you experienced it, endured it, survived it, witnessed it. You could fairly say that their lives could be divided into two: the period before they’d heard that noise and the period after.”

— Rumaan Alam

11. “If they didn’t know how it would end, with night, with more terrible noise from the top of Olympus, with bombs, with disease, with blood, with happiness, with deer or something else watching them from the darkened woods – well, wasn’t that true of every day?”

— Rumaan Alam

12. “Ruth had learned only one thing from the current reality, and it was that everything held together by tacit agreement that it would. All it took to unravel something was one party deciding to do just that. There was no real structure to prevent chaos. There was only a collective faith in order.”

— Rumaan Alam

13. “It was like some tacit agreement; everyone had ceded to things just falling apart. That it was common knowledge that things were bad surely meant they were actually worse.”

— Rumaan Alam

14. “Parenthood was never knowing what was going to hurt your kids, but knowing only that something, inevitably, would.”

— Rumaan Alam

15. “To enjoyment. To the enjoyment of vacations. To the enjoyment of any moment in life, I guess. Enjoying a moment is a victory. I think we need to hold on to those.”

— Rumaan Alam

16. “It was like some tacit agreement; everyone had ceded to things just falling apart.”

— Rumaan Alam

17. “There was no way to explain that the thing about dark is that it’s rare. There’s always some ambient light. There’s always that contrast that helps you understand: This is dark. The pricks of stars, the leak beneath the door, the glow of an appliance, something. Wasn’t its ability to assert itself, and at breakneck speed at that, light’s most remarkable quality?”

— Rumaan Alam

18. “Life was like that; life was about change.”

— Rumaan Alam

19. “The world was over, so why not dance?”

— Rumaan Alam

20. “He hoped the night would grow cold. He wanted to stand outside and shiver, then sink into the hot tub and look at the black limbs of the trees.”

— Rumaan Alam

21. “Home was just where you were, in the end. It was just the place where you found yourself.”

— Rumaan Alam

22. “She wanted her colleagues to need her as God wants people to keep praying.”

— Rumaan Alam

23. “There was a point, when he was younger, where he’d dreamed of understanding grown-up conversation. Now he could, and realized he’d overestimated it.”

— Rumaan Alam

24. “He retrieved his cigarettes from the glove box, wincing at the gravel. He sat on the front lawn in the shade of a tree and smoked. He should feel bad about this, but tobacco was the foundation of the nation. Smoking tethered you to history itself! It was a patriotic act, or once had been, anyway, like owning slaves or killing the Cherokee.”

— Rumaan Alam

25. “She could have got into that bed and read a book. She might even have dozed in that indolent way you do when you’re in a vacation home – not for need of rest but because you can.”

— Rumaan Alam

26. “Worry was infinite.”

— Rumaan Alam

27. “The building lacked a thirteenth floor because that was terrible luck. Simply pretending it wasn’t there was better.”

— Rumaan Alam

28. “Enjoying a moment is a victory.”

— Rumaan Alam

29. “Rose would have loved the flamingos. Maybe they should feel only awe at life’s mysteries, as children did.”

— Rumaan Alam

30. “They had asked themselves questions when they decided to have children – do we have the money, do we have the space, do we have what it takes – but they didn’t ask what the world would be when their children grew.”

— Rumaan Alam

31. “He kissed the worn cotton on Rose’s shoulder and regretted that he did not believe in prayer.”

— Rumaan Alam

32. “She kept her silence and pictured the faces of her daughter and grandsons, the atheist’s prayer.”

— Rumaan Alam

33. “Worry was infinite. A parent’s only task was to protect his child.”

— Rumaan Alam

34. “Humans were monsters but also perfect creations.”

— Rumaan Alam