Elif Batuman Quotes

Read enough about the dung beetle, and a picture of its character emerges: patient, optimistic, uncomplaining.

Elif Batuman

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Quotes to Explore

• I was a little girl fighting as a partisan against Nazi-Fascism.

  

  Oriana Fallaci
  • Girl
  • Fighting
  • Little

• 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.

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • Friends
  • Together
  • Trust

• Ten men waiting for me at the door? Send one of them home, I'm tired.

  

  Mae West
  • Men
  • Home
  • Waiting

• I'm from Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, if you say, 'I'm dangerous', you'd better be dangerous.

  

  Larry King
  • You
  • Better
  • Brooklyn

• 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.

  

  Yair Lapid
  • Play
  • Religious
  • Now

• I love adventure sports. And, I love cooking.

  

  Kajal Aggarwal
  • Love
  • Sports
  • Adventure

• 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.

  

  Hanya Yanagihara
  • Work
  • Quality
  • Complexity

• Corruption is in society and in every strata of society.

  

  Kapil Sibal
  • Society
  • Corruption
  • Every

• It's not like I've ever been the popular pretty girl at school or anything. I was always such a weirdo.

  

  Maisie Williams
  • School
  • Pretty
  • Girl

• What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.

  

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
  • Good
  • Lost
  • Best

• Personality is everything that's false in a human: everything that's been added on to him and contrived.

  

  Sam Shepard
  • Personality
  • Human
  • Him

• 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.

  

  Maggie Stiefvater
  • Death
  • Culture
  • Where

• Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.

  

  Wendell Phillips
  • Atmosphere
  • Brains

• We all understand it's a privilege just to be playing in this league.

  

  Calvin Johnson
  • Understand
  • Just
  • Privilege

• I learned about the market's power when I was traded to the Buffalo Bills for $100.

  

  Jack Kemp
  • Power
  • Learned
  • Market

• I love playing sports. I'm overly eager and aggressive and not very skilled, so it leads to many small injuries.

  

  Rachel Platten
  • Sports
  • Aggressive
  • Leads

• 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.

  

  Karla Souza
  • Life
  • Parents
  • Worried

• You can stroke people with words.

  

  F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • People
  • Words
  • You

• My first fear was about the devil, when I was around fire, something I saw in a movie. I think it's about pain, in whichever form it comes.

  

  Penelope Cruz
  • Movie
  • Fear
  • Pain

• Criminality is a basic part of human nature.

  

  Mark Frost
  • Nature

• I questioned everything. I didn't see a character developed in Platoon at all. The character in Blue Velvet was much more fascinating to me.

  

  Kyle MacLachlan
  • Character
  • Blue

• David knew that the very quality of his worship was not based on his own volition but on the object of his worship - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Though our affections for God may wax and wane, His character is unchanging! We even see David speaking to his own soul, demanding of it, "Bless the Lord!"

  

  Laura Story
  • Character
  • Spirit
  • Worship

• Somehow I find it easier to inhabit characters if they are a little bit pathetic. I do seem to have an affinity with pathetic people.

  

  Tom Hollander
  • Character
  • Littles
  • Easier

• Read enough about the dung beetle, and a picture of its character emerges: patient, optimistic, uncomplaining.

  

  Elif Batuman
  • Character
  • Picture
  • Optimistic