Elif Batuman Quotes
When I was growing up, many of my relatives had never seen a black person before. Today, hundreds, maybe thousands of Africans live in Istanbul's old city alone. It's hard to imagine their lives in their human totality.

Quotes to Explore
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I see no way out of the problems that organized religion and tribalism create other than humans just becoming more honest and fully aware of themselves.
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I liberate minds with my music. That's more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.
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But I did an awful lot of work in Hollywood, and in New York for that matter.
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We need to bring sustainable energy to every corner of the globe with technologies like solar energy mini-grids, solar powered lights, and wind turbines.
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You've got to take the bitter with the sour.
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Nature builds things that are antifragile. In the case of evolution, nature uses disorder to grow stronger. Occasional starvation or going to the gym also makes you stronger, because you subject your body to stressors and gain from them.
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Make it absolutely clear to yourself what you want from other people. That is really half the secret for drawing your desire to you in the shortest possible time and with the least amount of effort.
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I and life: The case was settled chivalrously. The opponents parted without having made up.
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I have a garden. We have fresh tomatoes and strawberries. People are different here... People out in California, they grow up quicker. They have a lot of excess, and they have a lot more things than we do here in Hungary. There, they start doing makeup when they're 13, when we would still be out in the countryside making sausage.
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I've been designing since I was 8. I started sketching dresses I could wear when skating. I was always involved in all aspects of skating, not just the technique, the choreography, the music, but the visual aspects, too - what I should wear.
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The single most important thing we can do to protect our communities from climate change is to reduce dangerous carbon pollution.
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I think that when I was child, acting was mostly just a hobby for me. It was something that my parents encouraged me to think of the way that my brothers thought of their cross-country classes, or my little sister to dance classes and art classes, and it was something like that for me.
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It is no surprise that companies do not often respond to moral pressure alone. We need to hit them hard in their pocketbook and on their balance sheet. We need to show them that their stock prices will be affected if their actions encourage Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions.
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I really can't believe what a state the Pyramids are in. I thought they had flat rendered sides, but when you get up close, you see how they are just giant boulders balanced on top of each other, like a massive game of Jenga that has got out of hand.
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I didn't have any friends, and I never went to the class parties.
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Career-driven millennials are strategic about working obsessively while they are single and earning enough money to afford advanced education. Most are patient enough to wait until 30 or later to develop their dream.
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I think, no matter what, when you're writing songs, most people write about the extremes of their experiences.
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I don't necessarily like being defined by my profession.
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I fell in love with music at the age of four, and I remember my grandmother being on the piano teaching me some church songs, some primary songs.
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The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them. If this is true, then reason is simply the methodizer of the imagination.
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This isn't an easy lifestyle for a coach's wife. The coach is the guy who stands up and hears everyone tell him how great he is. The wife is the one waiting at home alone while the coach is spending every night at the office.
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To hear the appreciation, the screams - that's what any of us need. We're at our best when we're wanted.
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'I’m not insane, sir,' I said. 'I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.'
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When I was growing up, many of my relatives had never seen a black person before. Today, hundreds, maybe thousands of Africans live in Istanbul's old city alone. It's hard to imagine their lives in their human totality.