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
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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.
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The short hair fits my personality more. I think maybe, with long hair, it was a role - I was playing dress-up a bit.
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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.
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Helping people boost themselves out of poverty is the best way to make a lasting positive difference in a person's life.
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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.
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I have to give importance to my personal life, my family, parents, and sisters. I hope I can strike the right balance.
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You must go after your wish. As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning.
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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.
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My therapy has come from paying attention to my life.
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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.
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The biggest things in life are not materials.
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My father has been the real anchor of the family. He's the one who has always encouraged my mother, my brother and me.
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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.
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I really built myself up, darn it, to be very strong.
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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.
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I dress up for awards, but only if somebody else is going to pay for the clothes. And shop for them, too!
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I have a social life. But I don't discuss it.
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Mangroves, salt marshes and sea grass lock away carbon at up to five times the rate of tropical forests.
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Real success is being totally indulgent about your own trip. You put your blinders on about the garbage and go full speed ahead.
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I am not the most eloquent guy in the world.
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When, from the depths of your heart, you spontaneously wish all beings to find true, lasting happiness, this is great love.
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Better a poor steam engine that runs, than a good one never finished.
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The modern dilemma is essentially a spiritual one, and every one of its main aspects, moral, political and scientific, brings us back to the need of a religious solution.
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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.
