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Amy Waldman

Amy Waldman Quotes

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Amy Waldman is an American author born on May 21, 1969. Her works are known for their profound social commentary and rich narrative techniques. Waldman's debut novel, 'The Submission,' published in 2006, received widespread acclaim and won multiple awards, including the Pulitzer Prize.

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Famous Amy Waldman Quotes

“In the movies Sean watched, redemption was a possession never lost once obtained. In life, redemption was walking up the down escalator: stop to congratulate yourself, and back you slid.”

Redemption Movies And Reality

Book:The Submission

Source: The Submission

“Tears filled Claire’s eyes but, as if they knew their place, didn’t leave.”

Book:The Submission

Source: The Submission

“She knew well the history of which they spoke because her father had been a part of it. When the military overseers of Pakistan had refused to allow the winning party in Bangladesh—then East Pakistan—to form a government, her father had put down his textbooks, left the university, and joined the fight. Hundreds of thousands, millions of deaths later, Bangladesh had its independence. His stories had made a deep impact on on Asma as a child. She had resolved to be as brave, only to learn that as a woman she wasn't expected to be.”

Women Bangladesh

Book:The Submission

Source: The Submission

“She ate ramen noodles from the vending machine, their texture just a few molecular recombinations from the Styrofoam cup containing them.”

Styrofoam Ramen Noodles

Book:The Submission

Source: The Submission

“I wasn't sitting around years ago thinking I really want to write a novel.”

Thinking Want Writing Years Novel Sitting Years Ago Sitting Around

Author:Amy Waldman

“I'm kind of a mash-up of taste - Graham Greene and Jane Austen; W.G. Sebald and Alice Munro.”

Kind Taste Jane Austen Mash Up

Author:Amy Waldman

“My children, who are almost two: watching them develop has made me pay much closer attention to how we become who we are.”

Children Made Two Pay Attention My Children Who We Are

Author:Amy Waldman

“My parents are aging and there are difficult issues. It's strange to have children at the beginning of life and parents nearing the end.”

Children Ends Parent Difficult Issues Strange Aging Beginning Of Life

Author:Amy Waldman

“And as journalists we look for differences - differences between countries, cultures, classes, and communities. We're very sensitized to difference, but it's much harder to write about similarities across countries, cultures, classes, and communities.”

Writing Looks Country Culture Community Differences Class Harder Journalist Similarity

Author:Amy Waldman

“As a novelist, you deepen your characters as you go, adding layers. As a reporter, you try to peel layers away: observing subjects enough to get beneath the surface, re-questioning a source to find the facts. But these processes aren't so different.”

Trying Different Enough Character Facts Process Subjects Source Surface Novelists Layers Questioning Reporters Observing Beneath The Surface

Author:Amy Waldman

“As a reporter you tend to seek coherence from your subject or your source - it all needs to add up and make sense. In truth, in reality, there's often a great deal of murkiness and muddiness, confusion and contradiction.”

Needs Reality Deals Subjects Source Add Confusion Make Sense Contradiction Reporters Coherence

Author:Amy Waldman

“Fiction just has a lot more room for ambivalence and internal conflict, contradiction, and for me that sums up so much of what people felt after 9/11 - confusion even. And I think that's hard to capture in journalism.”

People Thinking Hard Felt Rooms Fiction Conflict Confusion Journalism Contradiction Internals Capture Ambivalence Internal Conflict

Author:Amy Waldman

“History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction. Most people recognize that novelists do research to get the facts right - how a glove factory works, for example, or how courtesans in imperial Japan dressed.”

People Humans Facts Fiction Example Materials Behavior Research Novelists Japan Factories Human Behavior Gloves Raw Materials Courtesans

Author:Amy Waldman

“I found 'The Twin' sitting on a coffee table at a writers' colony in 2009. It carried praise from J.M. Coetzee. That seemed ample justification for using it to avoid my own writing. I finished it - weeping - a day later, and I've been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since.”

Writing Found My Own Powerful Sitting Praise Tables Finished Coffee Over It Justification Twins Weeping Colony Puzzling Coetzee

Author:Amy Waldman

“I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.”

Writing Years Firsts Character Stories Would Be Imagination Fiction Novel Subjects Skills Research Useless Articles Reporters My Imagination Profile

Author:Amy Waldman

“I read Claire Messud's 'The Emperor's Children,' I read Joseph O'Neill's 'Netherland' - but to me, they're not 9/11 novels. In 'The Emperor's Children,' 9/11 felt to me like a piece of the plot; the novel wasn't wrestling with what 9/11 meant. And 'Netherland' felt the same way. I liked both books a lot but I don't see them as 9/11 novels.”

Way Children Book Felt Novel Pieces Plot Wrestling Emperor Claire Netherlands

Author:Amy Waldman

“I think in the wake of 9/11, like a lot of Americans, you know, we were all very traumatized by the attacks, traumatized in a totally different way by some of what happened afterward in response. And I think there have been these questions hovering in the past decade of, what kind of country are we? Who are we?”

Thinking Knows Way Kind Has Beens Different Country Past Happened Response Decades Different Ways Hovering

Author:Amy Waldman

“Imagination, it turns out, is a great deal like reporting in your own head. Here is a paradox of fiction-writing. You are crafting something from nothing, which means, in one sense, that none of it is true. Yet in the writing, and perhaps in the reading, some of a character's actions or lines are truer than others.”

Writing Mean Character Action Turns Reading Imagination Lines Deals Fiction Paradox Fiction Writing

Author:Amy Waldman

“In Germany, you have a huge official memorial to the murdered Jews and then you have this artist who's been putting these stumbling blocks, these brass cobblestones, outside the houses Jews were taken away from. It's somewhat controversial and has met some resistance.”

Artist House Taken Huge Mets Jew Resistance Block Officials Germany Memorial Controversial Stumbling Brass Stumbling Blocks Cobblestone

Author:Amy Waldman

“Over the centuries, and even today, the Bible and Christian theology have helped justify the Crusades, slavery, violence against gays, and the murder of doctors who perform abortions. The words themselves are latent, inert, harmless - until they aren't.”

Today Christian Violence Century Gay Doctors Murder Slavery Theology Abortion Justify Doctor Who Crusades Latent Christian Theology

Author:Amy Waldman

“So the premise of 'The Submission' is that there's an anonymous competition to design a 9/11 memorial and it's won by an American Muslim, an architect born and raised in Virginia, and his name is Mohammad Khan.”

Names Born Design Competition Raised Architect Submission Memorial Premises Virginia Born And Raised

Author:Amy Waldman

“The September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon prompted a fundamental shift in the American government's approach to Islamic terrorism.”

World Government Approach Fundamentals Trade Terrorism Islamic September September 11 Pentagon American Government World Trade World Trade Center Islamic Terrorism September 11 2001

Author:Amy Waldman

“While researching 'The Submission,' I went to a protest against the Ground Zero mosque in New York when I was about to give birth to twins. It was about 100 degrees. People thought I was very dedicated.”

People Giving New York Birth Degrees Protest Zero Dedicated Twins Submission Mosques Ground Zero

Author:Amy Waldman

“Work less than you think you should. It took me a while to realise there was a point each day when my creativity ran out and I was just producing words - usually lousy ones - for their own sake. And nap: it helps to refresh the brain, at least mine.”

Thinking Should Helping Brain Creativity Mines Sake Ran Each Day Realising Naps

Author:Amy Waldman

“Jealousy clings to love's underside like bats to a bridge.”

Author:Amy Waldman

“Sorrow can be a bully.”

Book:The Submission: A Novel

Source: The Submission: A Novel

“There were in life rarely, if ever, "right" decisions, never perfect ones, only the best to be made under the circumstances.”

Ifs Made Decision Perfect Circumstances Right Decision

Book:The Submission: A Novel

Source: The Submission: A Novel

“Nothing in life gets dropped without someone else having to pick it up.”

Book:The Submission: A Novel

Source: The Submission: A Novel

“[s]he was a compulsive pessimist, always looking for the soft brown spot in the fruit, pressing so hard she created it.”

Hard Fruit Spots Brown Pessimist

Book:The Submission: A Novel

Source: The Submission: A Novel

“Fabricating reality was criminal; editing it, commonplace.”

Reality Criminals Editing Commonplace

Book:The Submission

Source: The Submission

“Perhaps this was the secret to being at peace: want nothing but what is given to you.”

Want Given Secret Being At Peace

Book:The Submission: A Novel

Source: The Submission: A Novel

“In life, redemption was walking up the down escalator: stop to congratulate yourself, and back you slid.”

Walking Redemption Escalators

Book:The Submission: A Novel

Source: The Submission: A Novel

“Marrying Cal, the scion of a family whose wealth dated to the Industrial Revolution and had multiplied through every turn of the American economy since, ought to have eased her worries about failing to climb as high as she believed she deserved. But the money was his, not theirs. The unspoken power this gave him kept her from asking: Why don't you stay home?”

Home Turns Wealth Worry Economy Failing Revolution Ought Asking Climbs Unspoken Marrying Industrial Revolution American Economy Asking Why Scions

Book:The Submission: A Novel

Source: The Submission: A Novel

“The rhetoric is the first step, it coarsens attitudes”

Firsts Attitude Steps First Steps Rhetoric

Author:Amy Waldman

“In architecture, space was a material to be shaped, even created. For these men, the material was silence. Silence like water in which you could drown, the absence of talk as constricting as the absence of air.”

Men Water Space Silence Air Materials Architecture Absence

Book:The Submission: A Novel

Source: The Submission: A Novel

“Eden, paradise - all the best gardens are imaginary.”

Garden Paradise Imaginary Eden All The Best

Author:Amy Waldman

“In America time was gold; in Bangladesh, corrugated tin.”

America Gold Tin Bangladesh

Book:The Submission: A Novel

Source: The Submission: A Novel

“Religious speech is extreme, emotional, and motivational. It is anti-literal, relying on metaphor, allusion, and other rhetorical devices, and it assumes knowledge within a community of believers.”

Community Religious Emotional Speech Assuming Metaphor Extremes Believer Devices Literal Allusion Rhetorical

Author:Amy Waldman

About the Author

Born: May 21, 1969
Known for: Author
Quotes: 38

Related Topics

Writing Fiction Thinking Character Children Novel People Reporters Subjects Bangladesh

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People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

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The Submission: A NovelRelated source material

The SubmissionRelated source material

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