Elif Batuman Quotes
Read enough about the dung beetle, and a picture of its character emerges: patient, optimistic, uncomplaining.
Quotes to Explore
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I was a little girl fighting as a partisan against Nazi-Fascism.
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For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.
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Ten men waiting for me at the door? Send one of them home, I'm tired.
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I'm from Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, if you say, 'I'm dangerous', you'd better be dangerous.
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For years, Judaism has been a sort of product put on the religious shelf, and on holidays, we would take it off the shelf and let seculars play with it for a bit. Now, Judaism is going back to being something that more closely touches everyone.
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I love adventure sports. And, I love cooking.
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Even before it opened its retail arm, Beigh was renowned among pashmina cognoscenti for the quality and complexity of the work produced in its workshop, a large, airy, sunlit rectangle of a room directly across from its second-floor shop.
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Corruption is in society and in every strata of society.
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It's not like I've ever been the popular pretty girl at school or anything. I was always such a weirdo.
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What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.
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Personality is everything that's false in a human: everything that's been added on to him and contrived.
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Would we be so enamored with dystopian fiction if we lived in a culture where violent death was a major concern? It wouldn't be escapism.
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Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.
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We all understand it's a privilege just to be playing in this league.
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I love playing sports. I'm overly eager and aggressive and not very skilled, so it leads to many small injuries.
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I would love to be a professional athlete. When I was living in Mexico as a teenager, I did seven years of gymnastics and went to the Junior Olympics. I was getting to the level of going to the international competitions, but I was only 14, and my parents were really worried because they did not want that to be my life.
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You can stroke people with words.
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I used homeopathy, acupuncture, yoga and meditation in conjunction with my chemotherapy to help me get stronger again after the cancer. I also chanted with Buddhist friends and prayed with Christian friends. I covered all my bases.
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It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all.
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I went through about 13 rounds of IVF before I got pregnant with Salome; it was very tough.
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I was pretty happy with how my career had gone, mainly because of the enormous freedom I've had to write what I've wanted to write. I had a very clear picture of who I was as a writer.
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Every actor, I don't care what they say, their roles are a lot more interesting than we are, and at the end of the day, it's still entertainment or fantasy. I think we can learn a lot from the characters we play and I find that the characters are even more noble than myself.
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Be the inspiration you want to see in others.
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Read enough about the dung beetle, and a picture of its character emerges: patient, optimistic, uncomplaining.
