Elif Batuman Quotes
Many books have changed my life, but only one has the word 'life-changing' in the title: Marie Kondo's 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying.'
Quotes to Explore
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Violin playing is a physical art with great traditions behind it.
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I tested for a couple of pilots, but they said I was too tall.
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Awards for arts, where you make comparisons, don't make much sense.
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The tragedy of all of this is that it happened to me and it shouldn't have happened. It ruined my life and my career. That's the tragedy of this.
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I'll tell you sort of an odd story: My music taste changed on 9/11. And it's very strange. I actually intellectually find this very curious. But on 9/11, I didn't like how rock music responded. And country music collectively, the way they responded, it resonated with me.
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I believe in the impossible because no one else does.
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I have to expend an awful lot of energy actively undoing the impact of my name. Understandably, people assume that I have at least some connection to Iran. The truth is that I don't. I have very little knowledge about the culture, the language, the history. I've never been to Iran. I've never even been inside a mosque.
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I've performed Schoenberg's 'Pierrot lunaire' many times.
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Being gay myself, I'm naturally drawn to the interactions between men rather than men and women.
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People weren't buying as many records. My record company did not want me. I went through three record companies, went on tour at the wrong time. It destroyed me.
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I love being a father. It's one of my big jobs is just being a parent. It's one of my favorite things I do.
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Because women have been marginalised, they're more likely to behave like immigrants and continue to push themselves forward in order to avoid falling through the cracks, but I don't think a happy ending comes from matriarchy.
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Cussing ain't for everybody.
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To be seen and to be respected for my work and acknowledged as a true American Latina... means a lot to me.
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While prices of goods continue to rise, American worker's wages remain stagnant.
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I played ping-pong with Prince. That's pretty surreal. He gave me a lesson before we played; like, he's great. He's a master at it, so I took the free lesson.
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I do watch 'American Idol' sometimes. It's not really that pleasurable... I take that back. It is the epitome of a guilty pleasure. Sometimes there's some good singers on that show.
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I really hate drama. It's draining; it's mentally draining. It's a waste of time.
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The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.
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For thousands of years, poetry has been picturing love as a mysterious and tragic power. But when anyone says the same thing in plain prose, and adds that life would be colourless and poor without the great passions, then this is called immorality!
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I've come up in the scripted world, and I have wished there were more time slots for us to tell compelling scripted stories and not fill the airwaves with a lot of fluff and tabloid entertainment.
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I don't mind if the couple next to me is tense or the kids are whiny. I'd even be happy to hear an honest argument, evidence of thinking. I'd like to know these teeth-perfect families don't just buy each other stuff but just occasionally can talk to one another.
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He who civilly shows the way to one who has missed it, is as one who has lighted another's lamp from his own lamp; it none the less gives light to himself when it burns for the other.
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Many books have changed my life, but only one has the word 'life-changing' in the title: Marie Kondo's 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying.'
