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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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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If they take the time to do that, what they will see are officers who are human, who are overwhelmingly doing the right thing for the right reasons, and who are too often operating in communities-and facing challenges-most of us choose to drive around.
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...if we get the right kind of energy, there are endless amounts. I think we should be developing every kind of alternative fuel that is available to us. That includes hydrogen to soybeans, from solar to wind. Whatever we can find that is going to help us clean up the environment we should be working really hard on developing.
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I've learned that I'm most powerful when I'm doing my art.
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Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to do; and then, without veering off direction, you will move straight to the goal.
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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.
