Elif Batuman Quotes
I enjoy a good meal as much as anyone, but I get so confused by nutritional, budgetary, ecological, ethical, aesthetic, and time-management concerns that I often subsist for weeks on instant oatmeal and multivitamins.
Quotes to Explore
-
Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.
-
If a Chinese student does not know Chinese learning, it's like a person without a surname, a horse without a bridle, a boat without a helm. The more Western learning he possesses, the more hateful of China he will become. Even if he becomes a capable man of vast learning, how can he be of any use to the state?
-
Theater dates very quickly.
-
I want to toy around with producing a Broadway show.
-
We are so Post-Modern that we don't realize how Post-Modern we are anymore.
-
Passive fatalism can never be the role of a revolutionary party, like the Social Democracy.
-
It gives me immense pleasure to be trustworthy, faithful, and true – to have the kind of romantic bond that inspires this.
-
For people who think of chicken as the meat choice of those-who-don't-really-like-meat, brining a bird will be a revelation.
-
If my client calls me and says, 'I'm going to a friend's premiere,' I'll say, 'Come over and let's do something cute.' And I won't bill them for that.
-
I go to all these photo shoots, and each time I figure out something new about myself and what I want to wear.
-
Tar sands oil is the dirtiest fuel on Earth. Because producing it consumes so much energy, a gallon of tar sands crude generates 17 percent more carbon pollution than conventional crude oil.
-
I mean normally you have your agent call the other agent and all the agents talk and then finally you get a phone call and you hear some misrepresentation of what someone else had to say.
-
When I got to law school, I didn't do very well. To put it mildly, I didn't do very well. I, in fact, graduated in the part of my law school class that made the top 90% possible.
-
Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.
-
In the tech world, you can reel off great products in several ways. You can have the once-in-a-lifetime gut instincts of a Steve Jobs. You can have the brainiac coding skills of a Bill Gates, Larry Page, or Sergey Brin. Or, I learned, you can have the deep intellectual curiosity and stubbornness of a Jeff Bezos.
-
I was very lucky: I started acting in this highly subsidized German theater world, so there was not so much job insecurity. We had great working conditions, long rehearsal times, well paid.
-
I believe that we haven't begun to understand the many forces that bind the physical world, any more than we understand our own minds and what they're capable of.
-
To expect for me to be one-way every time you see me is to expect me to be a one-dimensional man, which I've never been. I've always applauded my efforts to be diverse and multi-faceted.
-
I'm always open for people saying I'm wrong because most of the time I am.
-
You find sprinters testing other sprinters' mental capability. But these are my good friends on the track. I don't think we need to do that.
-
Time is an amazing enigma in which seeds that were planted can turn into a vibrant garden if properly pruned.
-
[T]he true natural sciences lock together in theory and evidence to form the ineradicable technical base of modern civilization. The pseudosciences satisfy personal psychological needs... but lack the ideas or the means to contribute to the technical base.
-
I enjoy a good meal as much as anyone, but I get so confused by nutritional, budgetary, ecological, ethical, aesthetic, and time-management concerns that I often subsist for weeks on instant oatmeal and multivitamins.
