Elif Batuman Quotes
For much of my adult life, I believed, inaccurately, that I knew the story of Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' - that I remembered it from childhood.
Quotes to Explore
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I like writing about places, about people and environments. When I create a world, it lets me go in and define the details of that world.
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A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.
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By 2000, politics will simply fade away. We will not see any political parties.
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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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I would love to do some more comedy. I would love to do some silliness. I would love to do some characters that have greater vulnerability.
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I'm a relic, and things were a lot different when I was fifteen and sixteen. There were no cell phones, no laptops... I learned to type on an actual typewriter.
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I look for something that is highly unusual, involving ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations.
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I definitely like wearing leotards.
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You do show after show after show and get them done and on the air. Television devours material. We work a minimum of 12, 14 hours, and often 15, 18 hours a day.
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The Paris peace talks kept a roof over my head and food on the table and clothes on my back because if something was said going in or coming out, I had the rent for the month.
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The minute you start feeling like you've got it down, you know what you're doing, you're dead in the water.
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You feel yourself working to show something. I've learned to distrust that feeling.
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Going around not fully believing that you're going to die is really problematic because it affects how you think about the future of the planet, about the future of your own life, about the decisions you're making.
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Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get.
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I grew up studying music. I went to conservatory.
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President Bush and I had asked Congress to appropriate a half-billion dollars to school vouchers. We didn't get it, and we were disappointed. But we did not go out and form a corporation to pay for it. That would have been a problem.
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Once I find a bag that I love, I wear it always. I just don't change my bags. I literally find one and stay with it.
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We only live once, but once is enough if we do it right. Live your life with class, dignity, and style so that an exclamation, rather than a question mark signifies it!
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Don't eat me. I have a wife and kids. Eat them.
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Brains are tricky and adaptable organs. For all the 'neuroplasticity' allowing our brains to reconfigure themselves to the biases of our computers, we are just as neuroplastic in our ability to eventually recover and adapt.
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All movies aren't fun; some are hard work. You try to do something and convey a set of emotions that have to do with some real life kind of stuff.
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The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.
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For much of my adult life, I believed, inaccurately, that I knew the story of Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' - that I remembered it from childhood.
