Naomi Alderman Quotes

I have always wanted to know what's going on under the surface.

I opened up every can of worms I could. I got to the place where I would peel back one layer, and then another layer, and the stuff that would come up underneath was so inspiring, it made me want to write about it.

I'm not just interested in fascinating faces or trees. I want to bore in deeper.

People often only see one side to someone's personality, but there are levels.

The truth is not a bidimensional thing; it's not flat. It's rounded; it's like a sphere, so there's always a hidden face. There's one that is revealed because there's light reflecting on it, but there's always a hidden one, and once you go around to see the hidden one, it moves, and that's life.

It's always interesting exploring something that has dimensions and layers to it.

Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability.

With what you don't know about me, I could just about fill the Grand Canyon.

I'm always perversely attracted to characters that seem one thing, but are ultimately revealed as another...

You think you know everything about a person, but the truth often comes as a surprise.

When things are too clear, they are no longer interesting.

It's fun to discover things. I wouldn't want everything laid out, simply and too obviously.

Anything that's worth anything is complicated.

I've played lots of villains in my time and I think the reason they've been so successful is that they're not two-dimensional. They're not black and white. That's the gig.

Life is multi-layered and there's no way I could do my life justice in one pat answer.

And sometimes when we listen, we are led into places we do not expect, into adventures we do not always understand.

We too often forget that not only is there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.

Surprise is the beginning of wisdom.

Poetry surprises us with what we already know.

...thinking that the world was like an orange, that I could split it open with my thumbnail and find a whole different world, the grown-up world, the secrets beneath the skin.

There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.

Serendipity... You will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called 'The Three Princes of Serendip': as their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.

I never wanted to make it too easy for people to sum me up.

I enjoy playing evil, but not one-dimensional evil characters. I like the ebbs and cracks in the armor.

You need an entire life just to know about tomatoes.