Elif Batuman Quotes
The first modern novel was already a product, even an expression, of negative criticism: 'Don Quixote' contains a quite explicit critique of the chivalric romance and its insufficiency to account for the way real life feels when you get up in the morning in 17th-century Spain.
Quotes to Explore
-
Music is my way out. I keep things locked up and never say anything. I guess in order to say something to one person, I have to sing it to a couple of thousand. It doesn't make for healthy relationships.
-
The short hair fits my personality more. I think maybe, with long hair, it was a role - I was playing dress-up a bit.
-
That's what all art's about - a sense of moving away from boundaries that you can't in real life. Like a dancer is always trying to fly, really - to do something that's just not possible. But you try to do as much as you can within those physical boundaries.
-
Helping people boost themselves out of poverty is the best way to make a lasting positive difference in a person's life.
-
My dad likes to recite the story of 'Pablo the Donkey' before dinner to teach us the real meaning of Christmas. Every year, it's the same; every year, we cringe!
-
I take so much pleasure at seeing customers who are happy: happy with what they eat, but happy with their friends and sharing a great moment together, and I think that is more important in life than the endless pursuit of perfection.
-
I have to give importance to my personal life, my family, parents, and sisters. I hope I can strike the right balance.
-
You must go after your wish. As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning.
-
Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.
-
My therapy has come from paying attention to my life.
-
I'll never forget the modelling shoot I did in the Bahamas on a pink sand beach at Harbour Island. It felt like I'd just landed in paradise; it was so beautiful.
-
There are not many things in my life I can be absolutely proud of or certain I got right, but one of them is that I've got better as an actor. I've learnt how to do it. And I still have enough energy to do it.
-
The biggest things in life are not materials.
-
My father has been the real anchor of the family. He's the one who has always encouraged my mother, my brother and me.
-
I want to do just, like, regular art. Whatever is made today on canvas goes up against all of art history. It's the most radical thing.
-
I really built myself up, darn it, to be very strong.
-
My grandmother, grandfather, my mom - we've always been driven by laughter. It's what held us together. Thanksgivings, any kind of family get-together, we usually end up in tears.
-
I dress up for awards, but only if somebody else is going to pay for the clothes. And shop for them, too!
-
I love photography. And I just eat it up. I feel like I'm an encyclopedia, you know, inside.
-
Self-acceptance has been a blessed by-product of middle age.
-
Calvin Klein is such an iconic brand in fashion, so I feel like working with them means you're definitely doing something right. They bring validation to someone, not only in the fashion community but in someone's career, which is why it was such an honor to work with them.
-
I'm 34 now, I like to say 35 because it makes me look better for my age, and I have to keep a little bit of a profile so that every three years if I do put a record out, I don't have to substantiate where I've been for three years and why the silence and the sort of false mysterioso.
-
I see no room in holy Scripture for any sexual activity outside of matrimony.
-
The first modern novel was already a product, even an expression, of negative criticism: 'Don Quixote' contains a quite explicit critique of the chivalric romance and its insufficiency to account for the way real life feels when you get up in the morning in 17th-century Spain.
