Elif Batuman Quotes
For a Nabokov fan, paging through 'Fine Lines,' which includes a critical introduction and several essayistic evaluations of Nabokov's scientific oeuvre, can feel a bit like reading the second half of 'Pale Fire': one is confronted by a content-rich, almost dementedly tangential commentary on an increasingly inscrutable work.
Quotes to Explore
-
The nations of Africa, as is true of every continent of the world, from time to time dispute among themselves. These quarrels must be confined to this continent and quarantined from the contamination of non-African interference.
-
You find out your mistakes from an audience that pays admission.
-
I love heavy music. I keep Flume nice and melodic, so I save the angry, testosterone-fueled heavy stuff for What So Not. I think it's a good defining thing for the two projects.
-
It's nature-nurture, right? I've been nurtured by Californians.
-
In my situation, every time I write a sentence, I'm thinking not only of the people I ended up in college with but my siblings, my family, my school friends, the people from my neighborhood. I've come to realize that this is an advantage, really: it keeps you on your toes.
-
You can still make music that people love, but there won't be more innovation. I started listening to electronic music a long time ago. But mostly I listen to rap. I think rap is the most interesting.
-
Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.
-
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
-
I like beautiful clothing. I love Bergdorfs.
-
The same parts of my brain get as excited as when I study bio or read a novel and write a paper on it.
-
John Sayles is good. He's like a good thoroughbred owner - he leaves the trainers alone.
-
I was very involved with school by the time I was 15 and wasn't working much as a model.
-
You can't be around Oprah and not have her influence you, and I don't mean that because she's doling out the free advice. I mean it because she is someone that leads with truth and follows her heart. She's a force.
-
My grandmother impressed upon me the importance of family, and my grandfather encouraged my hunger for learning.
-
Actors are just soldiers who follow commands.
-
I'm a weekday warrior who takes our Georgia values to Washington, and on the weekends, I'm back home.
-
It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.
-
Einstein was a man who could ask immensely simple questions. And what his work showed is that when the answers are simple too, then you can hear God thinking.
-
Novels are so much unrulier and more stressful to write. A short story can last two pages and then it's over, and that's kind of a relief. I really like balancing the two.
-
We want people to know they shouldn't feel like social pariahs just because they want to dress differently or listen to rock n' roll.
-
Algeria was therefore only the beginning of something that was in development: this is why I say that it's the global capitalist system that finally reacted against us.
-
Theatre is an exclusive place that tends to be dominated by white men, or dying white men.
-
I think I really produce my best work in Iran.
-
For a Nabokov fan, paging through 'Fine Lines,' which includes a critical introduction and several essayistic evaluations of Nabokov's scientific oeuvre, can feel a bit like reading the second half of 'Pale Fire': one is confronted by a content-rich, almost dementedly tangential commentary on an increasingly inscrutable work.
