The Submission Quotes

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

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

“Nothing in life gets dropped without someone else having to pick it up.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“Sorrow can be a bully.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“Perhaps this was the secret to being at peace: want nothing but what is given to you.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“Jealousy clings to love's underside like bats to a bridge.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

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

“The real act of will was not in the creating of a garden but in the sustaining, the continuous stand against wildness.”
― Amy Waldman, 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.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“Fabricating reality was criminal; editing it, commonplace.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“Eden, paradise - all the best gardens are imaginary.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“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.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“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?”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“Shut up, you fat water buffalo, rolling in the mud of other people's lives, is what she wanted to say. But she bit her tongue and reminded herself of how Mrs. Mahmoud had held her hand through Abdul's birth, which made her think that if she had found strength enough to push him out, she could hold her meanest comments in. At this moment, it seemed harder.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

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

“Debbie's facts coincided miraculously with her opinions”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“The rhetoric is the first step, it coarsens attitudes”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“In America time was gold; in Bangladesh, corrugated tin.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“His boast of irreligion stayed on his tongue,for what reasons he couldn't say,any more than he could say why words long unuttered floated unbidden into his mind:La ilaha illa Allah,Muhammad rasulullah.The Kalima,the Word of Purity,the declaration of faith.It almost made him laugh:at the moment he planned to disavow his Muslim identity,his subconscious had unearthed its kernel.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“Its walls were mirrored, its tables marble, its espresso feral, its pastry stale.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“Stumble on joy"--the phrase had knocked something loose in him. Joy: What did it feel like? Trying to remember, he was overcome by longing. He knew satisfaction, the exhilaration of success, contentment, and happiness to the extent he could identify it. But joy?”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

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

“Don't succumb to the fear; don't mistake the absolutism of Khan's opposition for morality”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“...she had been thinking and listening at the same time, which made it hard to hear.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“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.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“For seven months, every single day, I went to the hole,’ he told the crowds who gathered to hear him. ‘I lost my marriage—’ always murmurs at this point—‘I lost my career, I lost my home, but that’s nothing.’ A pause. ‘My brother—my only brother—lost his life.’ Sometimes people would break into inadvertent applause at this, which was awkward. Sean learned to lower his eyes until it stopped.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“Perhaps this was the secret to being at peace: want noting but what is given to you.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission