Elif Batuman Quotes

I like to think that I know a lot of words, but I definitely don't know all of them.

Elif Batuman

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Quotes to Explore

• Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

  

  Karl Popper
  • Problem
  • Possible
  • Theory

• Anna Wintour has guided me.

  

  Natalie Massenet
  • Me
  • Guided
  • Anna

• I wanted to see how flavors, spices, and grains traveled back and forth along the Silk Road and were interpreted by a multitude of cultures' palates.

  

  Hanya Yanagihara
  • Road
  • See
  • Cultures

• People who get rich early should help the rest get rich.

  

  Zong Qinghou
  • People
  • Help
  • Rest

• I love singing. It's who I am. When I act, I take a small part of myself and just magnify it, but when I'm singing, that's who I am. I don't write music, so I choose songs that I would have written.

  

  Lainie Kazan
  • Music
  • Singing
  • Write

• I've never been a rap guy, I don't really know that much about rap music, to be honest. I like it, but I think what really happened was just my music seems to work so well with rap music.

  

  Flume
  • Work
  • Music
  • Think

• This applies to many film jobs, not just editing: half the job is doing the job, and the other half is finding ways to get along with people and tuning yourself in to the delicacy of the situation.

  

  Walter Murch
  • People
  • Job
  • Yourself

• Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.

  

  Saint Augustine
  • Good
  • Great
  • God

• I think any artist that's going to become anything in this world faces humility: with great humility comes great success.

  

  Yelawolf
  • World
  • Great
  • Success

• There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.

  

  Samuel Butler
  • Truth
  • Source
  • Pursuit

• I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999.

  

  Lance Armstrong
  • Winning
  • Seven
  • Unfair

• I realize how myself and other people have started to almost fool ourselves that it's more important to us and more real than the real world, the offline world, and we value looking at our phone and pixels on a screen more than connecting eye to eye with a human being, which is terrifying to me because we're becoming robots.

  

  Tali Lennox
  • People
  • World
  • Value

• Most actors don't grow up with sweet, vanilla parents.

  

  Nadia Bjorlin
  • Up
  • Parents
  • Sweet

• The music led to the acting. But movies aren't something you can just will yourself into. Someone has to choose you, and you have to be quite fortunate to be chosen.

  

  Ice T
  • Music
  • Acting
  • Yourself

• I have a very personal interest. I am a Miami-Dade voter. One of the issues is that my vote and so many other votes of women and African Americans in Florida are being discounted or discarded. I want my vote to count.

  

  Patricia Ireland
  • Women
  • Vote
  • Count

• When you're in a place, the details you focus on are different than details you focus on when you're writing about it.

  

  Tea Obreht
  • Different
  • Writing
  • Focus

• I would be content if I had nothing but a tape-recorder. I could still write songs and record them.

  

  Barry Gibb Bee Gees
  • Write
  • Nothing
  • Content

• Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.

  

  W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Men
  • School
  • House

• What, like I want to look like Dick Clark? No. I think I look great with liver spots.

  

  Dennis Quaid
  • Great

• No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Soul
  • Words
  • Lies

• First grade is the prelude of things to come, a life organized around frontal-lobe capacities: sitting still; keeping sphincters in check; being able to use words rather than acting out; understanding abstract and symbolic ideas; planning for tomorrow; and being in tune with teachers and classmates.

  

  Bessel van der Kolk
  • Words
  • Ideas
  • Teachers

• The truth is really funny. It's uncomfortable sometimes, it's dramatic sometimes, but it's really funny. Life is funny.

  

  Chris Messina
  • Life
  • Truth
  • Funny

• Just as we have had great working lives, we have also had good personal lives. For instance, we have made school our number one priority. We have been in school our entire lives with kids our own age. We guess that's pretty regular.

  

  Mary-Kate Olsen
  • Good
  • Great
  • School

• I like to think that I know a lot of words, but I definitely don't know all of them.

  

  Elif Batuman
  • Words