Top 33 Batuman Elif Quotes
#1. At the same time, it seemed certain to me that someday I would really want to hear his voice and wouldn't be able to, and I would think back to the time that he had invited me to call him, and it would seem as incomprehensible as an invitation to speak to the dead.
Elif Batuman
#2. I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction and, therefore, there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only under that law would a well-ordered society be intelligible and life worth living.
Mahatma Gandhi
#3. You have to stay hydrated when you have crying scenes.
Claire Danes
#4. The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.
Mark Twain
#5. Start to exercise a firm control over what influences your experiences before situations control you.
Steven Redhead
#6. I am a great admirer of Henry Jeffreys and have been eagerly awaiting his booze and empire book for many years!
Elif Batuman
#7. If I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe, I still think that's where we're going to find them.
Elif Batuman
#8. Even though I had a deep conviction that I was good at writing, and that in some way I already was a writer, this conviction was completely independent of my having ever written anything, or being able to imagine ever writing anything, that I thought anyone would like to read.
Elif Batuman
#9. The novel form is about the protagonist's struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his favorite books.
Elif Batuman
#10. Each work of criticism is supposed to build on the body of work, to increase the total sum of human understanding. It's not like filling your house with more and more beautiful wicker baskets. It's supposed to be cumulative - it believes in progress.
Elif Batuman
#11. As for unhappy families, star-crossed lovers, and exiled heroes, they are simply universal.
Elif Batuman
#12. An amazing sight, someone you're infatuated with trying to fish something out of a jeans pocket.
Elif Batuman
#13. You can't go on running forever ... " "And you can't go on ... " Alfie desperately searched for the right word, " ... mopedding* forever!
David Walliams
#14. What does literature do better than anything else? It provides a detailed representation of the inner experience of being alive in a given time and place.
Elif Batuman
#15. You just go around getting hung up on all the least convenient things
and if the only obstacle in your way is a little extra work, then that's the wonderful gift right there.
Elif Batuman
#16. I didn't care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years
it took the experience of lived time
to realize that they really are the same thing.
Elif Batuman
#17. Whenever I am worried about anything," said this guy Ben,"I like to think about China. China has a population of like two billion people, and not one of them even remotely cares about whatever you think is so important." I acknowledged that this was a great comfort.
Elif Batuman
#18. When you invent something, you're drawing on reservoirs of knowledge that you already have. It's only when you're faithful to the truth that something can come to you from the outside.
Elif Batuman
#19. I give 98 percent of my mental energy to Chess Others give only 2 percent
Bobby Fischer
#20. I spent the next two weeks flopped on my grandmother's super-bourgeois rose-colored velvet sofa, consuming massive quantites of grapes, reading obsessively.
Elif Batuman
#21. Since then, as the Chinese navy becomes larger and more wide-ranging, the bent toward Mahan has only intensified in Beijing, especially with the rise of Indian sea power, which the Chinese fear; the Indians, for their part, view the Chinese in similar Mahanian terms.
Robert D. Kaplan
#22. I had a slab of German chocolate cake the size of a child's tombstone. Ralph
Elif Batuman
#23. I know, but what was I supposed to do? Stay and become increasingly unhappy? Because I wasn't happy in that life anymore.
Harper Bliss
#24. linguist called Alla who advised us, among other things, to treat our more stupid students with sympathy, "as if they had cancer." While
Elif Batuman
#25. Kellan's hand found hers, took it into his strong grasp. "There," he said, pressing a kiss to the center of her palm. "I've got you, Mouse." "Yes, you do," she replied.
Tina St. John
#27. Whenever I'm worried about anything," said this guy Ben, "I like to think about China. China has a population of like two billion people, and not one of them even remotely cares about whatever you think is so important." I acknowledged that this was a great comfort. Svetlana
Elif Batuman
#28. I learned many interesting things from Delia: for example, that she and Gulya had both married alcoholics, but Delia's alcoholic had taken all her money, whereas Gulya had managed her alcoholic well and taken all his money.
Elif Batuman
#29. A few times I saw a chicken walking around importantly, like some kind of a regional manager.
Elif Batuman
#31. Anything can happen in stock markets and you ought to conduct your affairs so that if the most extraordinary events happen, that you're still around to play the next day.
Warren Buffett
#32. When you're reading a novel, I think the reason you care about how any given plot turns out is that you take it as a data point in the big story of how the world works. Does such-and-such a kind of guy get the girl in the end? Does adultery ever bring happiness? How do winners become winners?
Elif Batuman
#33. It's so hard to be sincere without sounding pretentious,' she said. 'I mean, what are you supposed to do if you really happen to feel like you've swallowed the universe? Not say so?
Elif Batuman
