Elif Batuman Quotes

One of the most painful parts of a breakup is having the feeling that your life is a story, and then the other person leaves and takes the story with them. And you're left there without it. You're left in this version of life that's basically a succession of events and interactions that don't seem to be going anywhere.

Elif Batuman

• Life
• Feeling
• Breakup

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Quotes to Explore

• The library world is set up on this model where the library is a physical building and has a number of books and serves a geographical community.

  

  Aaron Swartz
  • Up
  • World
  • Community

• I would like to direct.

  

  Aaron Eckhart
  • Like
  • Would
  • Direct

• My dear, did you ever stop to think what a wonderful bunker you would make?

  

  Walter Hagen
  • Think
  • You
  • Stop

• No decent career was ever founded on a public.

  

  F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Career
  • Ever
  • Decent

• Most people who aspire to be president don't have a foreign policy and national security background. The exception was certainly Hillary Clinton.

  

  Jack Keane
  • People
  • Security
  • Policy

• Don't be too proud to take lessons. I'm not.

  

  Jack Nicklaus
  • Proud
  • Take
  • Lessons

• The more walking-around money I have, the less I walk around.

  

  Iggy Pop
  • Money
  • Walking
  • More

• Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.

  

  Iris Murdoch
  • Love
  • For Her
  • Falling

• We served on the editorial board of a literary monthly called Face in 1968 and 1969. He was a young writer, and I was also interested in broad cultural issues. We agreed on all major issues and became friends.

  

  Vaclav Klaus
  • Friends
  • Young
  • Face

• If only I may grow: firmer, simpler, quieter, warmer.

  

  Dag Hammarskjold
  • May
  • Grow
  • Only

• Music was definitely a way out. Instead of playing basketball, I was going to recording studios.

  

  Flo Rida
  • Music
  • Way
  • Basketball

• For my part, I confess I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do, in looking about and finding out one's acquaintance, that, really, one has no time to mind the stage. One merely comes to meet one's friends, and show that one's alive.

  

  Fanny Burney
  • Time
  • Mind
  • Friends

• To talk about planning an economic system is to talk in old terms, and I find myself sometimes having to teach Westers about what the market really means.

  

  Vaclav Klaus
  • Myself
  • Planning
  • Economic

• When I started out in life I wanted to teach.

  

  Victor Spinetti
  • Life
  • Teach
  • Out

• The NSA has different reporting requirements for each branch of government and each of its legal authorities.

  

  Barton Gellman
  • Different
  • Government
  • Legal

• There is a fantasy as old as the modern gay rights movement that if all our skins turned lavender overnight, the majority, confounded by our numbers and our diversity, and recognising a few of our faces, would at once let go of prejudice forevermore.

  

  Ian Mckellen
  • Gay
  • Diversity
  • Rights

• You look at Kawhi Leonard, Tony Allen, Draymond Green: they are great on ball, and they are great team defenders as well. You want to be both of them, not just one.

  

  Zach LaVine
  • Great
  • Want
  • Team

• We treat old people so badly. There is nothing easy about 80.

  

  Jack Klugman
  • People
  • Easy
  • Treat

• We are three dimensional beings: body, mind, spirit.

  

  Laurence Fishburne
  • Mind

• Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

  

  Lao Tzu
  • Life
  • Different
  • Death

• I want an ending that's satisfying. I'm more of a classical writer than a modernist one in that I want the ending to be coherent and feel like an ending. I don't like when it just seems to putter out. I mean, life is chaotic enough.

  

  Jeffrey Eugenides
  • Life

• All we have is the past, but for people of the future, there's not even going to be a history there. The history of recorded music has turned into a flat fucking screen of an iTunes playlist. I'm preserving something that's going extinct! That's all rock'n'roll has been since day one. It's all necrophilia.

  

  Ariel Pink
  • People
  • Music
  • History

• I go eat a sandwich for lunch and have a milk shake and miss going to the gym for 10 days, and somebody snaps a picture of me on the beach, and all of a sudden, I've lost it. Why do I need to be perfect all the time?

  

  Eric Dane
  • Time
  • Why
  • Lost

• One of the most painful parts of a breakup is having the feeling that your life is a story, and then the other person leaves and takes the story with them. And you're left there without it. You're left in this version of life that's basically a succession of events and interactions that don't seem to be going anywhere.

  

  Elif Batuman
  • Life
  • Feeling
  • Breakup