Elif Batuman Quotes
'Constructed Worlds' comes from a novel draft that I wrote in my early twenties and reread/revised only in my late thirties.
Quotes to Explore
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I wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember.
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I learn something in the interviews from time to time.
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My hair is not really white; it's kind of grayish, and I don't like the color. So I make it totally white with Klorane dry shampoo. That is the best thing to do because my hair is always clean.
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My mother witnessed the martyrdom of her husband, Hajj Malik Shabazz, Malcolm X, on Sunday, February 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. My older sisters, Attallah, Qubilah and I were seated with our mother up front and stage right.
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Russia and China, which have embraced autocratic capitalism, have attracted admirers and emulators by the seeming success of their strongman rule.
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I wrote all four of my books at Starbucks.
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People do connect me with James Bond simply because I happen to like scrambled eggs and short-sleeved shirts and some of the things that James Bond does, but I certainly haven't got his guts nor his very lively appetites.
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I'm more and more fascinated in my own work. I work from 10 A.M. until about 9 P.M., but it's not an obsession, it's a pleasure. There's never enough time.
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I got some news for you. One, there is no Jesus. Two, there is no God. Three, mind your own business and everything works out.
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Math proficiency is the gateway to a number of incredible careers that students may never have considered.
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I used to get a lot of rubber ducks on my birthdays as presents because, you know, I make rubber ducks. But then I get the ugliest ones with a neck, ugly colors, and devil ears. I don't like those.
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If I was bigger I might not have had the same skill set as I do, the speed.
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I'm a lover of songs.
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There's a sense of spontaneity, and no emphasis on jokes in this show. People generally talk the way they talk in life if you were in this particular situation.
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Animals in the wild are lean, and I think we should be too.
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If you think you don't want to play another psychopath, but the script is amazing, and the director is fantastic, and the story is incredible, then you may end up playing your third psychopath in a row.
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The Republican Party of Richard Nixon was called to power in 1968 to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam and restore law and order to campuses and cities convulsed by crime, riots and racial violence. Nixon appeared to have succeeded and was rewarded with a 49-state landslide.
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If my duty does involve heralding His law in every arena, then the Church in America is failing radically today.
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I'd sometimes do 50, 60 takes of song.
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Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.
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I want people to hear or watch something I've done and feel that I've given it everything I've got.
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American liberals are an external part of Israel's conscience, and when it disdains them, it becomes a harder and more isolated place. The support that Israel has gained from millenarian American conservatives is no substitute, in part because such allies aren't persuasive global advocates for Israel.
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The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.
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'Constructed Worlds' comes from a novel draft that I wrote in my early twenties and reread/revised only in my late thirties.
