Elif Batuman Quotes
Even in novels where the love relationship isn't the focus, I feel like it's often there, and the background is some barometer of whether this is a happy or sad story or whether this is a successful or unsuccessful life.
Quotes to Explore
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When you make a living from something, it changes your relationship with it.
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A person's life is of their own making, and I take full responsibility for mine.
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Let my soul smile through my heart and my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.
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Many who seem to be struggling with adversity are happy; many, amid great affluence, are utterly miserable.
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There must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On this view, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life.
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Focus on being balanced - success is balance.
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I have spent my life paying attention to my art form, developing my art form, worrying about my show and what I'm bringing to people, making sure that I give them a fine trade.
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As an assistant operations officer for a helicopter task force in Iraq, I saw my fellow Guardsmen and soldiers risk life and limb to maintain diesel fuel supply lines.
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I think magazines and interviews make celebrities into this bigger-than-life thing, but I've gotten bullied over trying different things with my makeup.
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In my music and my life, I'm honest with my feelings, and people appreciate that. That's just the way I am.
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For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying.
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I love talking to my friends at uni and seeing what they are doing. They're just finishing their dissertations, and I kind of wish I could live their life for a second. I wish my school days could have dragged on a little longer, or that I could go back and do it later in life.
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I do believe in happy-ever-after.
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Of course, the simple explanation of the fact is that marriage is the most important act of man's life in Europe or America, and that everything depends upon it.
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Religions have always stressed that compassion is not only central to religious life, it is the key to enlightenment and it the true test of spirituality. But there have always have been those who'd rather put easier goals, like doctrine conformity, in place.
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The real guys that I knew were really cool people, who I played basketball with and traveled with on teams and knew their families and knew that they love their family. They just happen to do something that wasn't all the way legal, but it was a part of their life, and you knew that they hustled.
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And harmony means that the relationship between all the elements used in a composition is balanced, is good.
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There are very little things in this life I cannot afford and patience is one of them.
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I personally am a 'discovery writer,' as we're termed, someone who plans the book by writing it and then revising the entire thing. When it comes to saga, this means writing large chunks of prose before any of it coalesces into a book.
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I'm disregarding all the rules I've seen as people approach writing music. I'm trying to break them.
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When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.
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An hour series is a killer. It's hard on you physically.
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We still go to nonfiction for content. And if it's well-written, that's a bonus. But we don't often talk about the nonfiction work of art. That's what I'm very interested in.
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Even in novels where the love relationship isn't the focus, I feel like it's often there, and the background is some barometer of whether this is a happy or sad story or whether this is a successful or unsuccessful life.
