Elif Batuman Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I'm afraid one thing - I don't like heights. Heights bug me out. I'm not cool with heights. I refuse to do a comedy show 12 stories up. I'm fearless about everything else.
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All institutions have lapses, even great ones, especially by individual rogue employees - famously in recent years at 'The Washington Post,' 'The New York Times,' and the three original TV networks.
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America's victory in the Cold War was not without painful social costs.
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I used to think I had ambition... but now I'm not so sure. It may have been only discontent. They're easily confused.
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The biography of a writer - or even the autobiography - will always have this incompleteness.
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Being mean just for being mean's sake isn't funny.
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I don't meet many people who are talking about shows on Showtime.
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When you're not involved, other people's unhappiness seems to be about the funniest damn thing on earth because you think you can solve it, that you are God, that you are above this, and that their unhappiness is just such useless toil and agony. If it's you, it ceases to be a comedy.
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You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.
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'Good English' is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another.
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We need to understand what innovation will be built on top of our networks.
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I don't particularly get nervous about anything.
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Unfortunately or fortunately, in order to become acquainted with the idiom of country or rock music, it is necessary to occasionally play in a bar. Bars are a rehearsal place.
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Belief is not restricted to a brief affirmation based on imitation; rather, it has degrees and stages of development. It is like a seed growing into a fully grown, fruit-bearing tree; like the sun's image in a mirror or in a drop of water to its images on the sea's surface and to the sun itself.
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If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.
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I enjoy science, and I'm a very curious person. I always want to know the reason behind everything, big or small.
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I want kids. I want a soccer team, and I want a husband.
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Police can only act on intelligence.
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Dick Cheney and Bush's rise to power were built on tons of money from corporations and a dulled press.
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I want people to learn what democracy means.
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Certainly, we have to make sure our police forces do not have weapons of mass destruction with which they can terrorize our communities.
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We live in this era that has benefited from the Industrial Revolution, and we live with a kind of luxury and plenty that even all but the poorest of Americans live with a kind of sensuousness that was unimagined by medieval kings. But in order to get to this point, a lot of people had to suffer in really terrible ways.
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There's an assault on human sexuality, as Judge Scalia said, they've taken sides in the culture war and on top of that if we have a democracy, the democratic processes should be that we can elect representatives who will share our point of view and vote those things into law.
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Soccer is taken extremely seriously in Turkey.
