Elif Batuman Quotes

#1. Neeve should have guessed that her fixation with power would bring her to an opportunity to bargain with a demon, but she hadn't. She

Maggie Stiefvater

#2. One fine day you've got to give your body to somebody, or turn into a fully-fledged zombie.

James Purdy

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. That's the rankest psychologism, and was conclusively revealed as hogwash by Gottlob Frege in the 1890s!

Sheldon Cooper

#6. As for unhappy families, star-crossed lovers, and exiled heroes, they are simply universal.

Elif Batuman

#7. I was a newspaper editor in high school, and I truly thought of journalism as a career. I loved it.

Ed Asner

#8. Of course married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one's worse habits.

Oscar Wilde

#9. Doesn't he own a shirt?" I asked, grabbing a spade. "Unfortunately, I don't think so. Not even in the winter. He's always running around half-dressed." She groaned. "Its disturbing that I have to see so much of his ... skin. Yuck." Yuck for her. And hot damn for me.

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#10. The history of other cultures is non-existent until it erupts in confrontation with the United States.

Edward Said

#11. An amazing sight, someone you're infatuated with trying to fish something out of a jeans pocket.

Elif Batuman

#12. If you 're serious about getting it on again, be sure to give me some advance notice, so I can grab my appointment calendar and block out three minutes.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. You can't change a regime on the basis of compassion. There's got to be something harder.

Nadine Gordimer

#16. Every person, genius or moron, has a right to reproduce himself.

Lee Kuan Yew

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. I'm gonna party, see how intoxicated I can get and how many rules I can flaunt. That's my motto.

H. G. Bissinger

#23. Forget the pain. Learn to endure. Focus your attention elsewhere.

Marlo Morgan

#24. A few times I saw a chicken walking around importantly, like some kind of a regional manager.

Elif Batuman

#25. 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

#26. Incoherence is a common hazard for journalists who dabble in ethical judgments.

Andrew Ferguson

#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. 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

#29. Labor saving devices have destroyed many jobs but have given rise to many new ones. It simply is up to us if we are going to resist or embrace the future.

Miles Anthony Smith

#30. I had a slab of German chocolate cake the size of a child's tombstone. Ralph

Elif Batuman

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. I love America, but I can't spend the whole year here. I can't afford the taxes

Mick Jagger

#34. I am a great admirer of Henry Jeffreys and have been eagerly awaiting his booze and empire book for many years!

Elif Batuman

#35. 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

#36. 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