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 wish America would spend even half as much time complaining about plastics in our oceans as we do about actresses' plastic surgery.
-
I don't think about awards when I set out to do something. If that happens, it's great.
-
For four years doing that same character all the time kind of bothered me. Butit opened up a lot of doors.
-
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.
