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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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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The American Negro has no conception of the hundreds of millions of other non-whites' concern for him: he has no conception of their feeling of brotherhood for and with him.
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Which country in the world has the kind of talent India has in numbers?
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A good teacher offers practice, a bad one offers theories.
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I never wanted to give up my given name. I'm proud of it, but the only problem was that no one remembered it. It was just a little too awkward, and they mispronounced it so frequently.
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I'd love to work with Kanye West. He's gone through a lot of stuff in the public eye, but his music is genius. He always takes risks.
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Showing up to games year after year, no matter what the product on the field gives you back, is a learned behavior - sort of like rats in a maze searching for cheese. The rat learns the maze, learns where the cheese is placed and eventually goes to it without thought, even when the cheese is taken away. The rat doesn't know anything else.
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Soccer is taken extremely seriously in Turkey.
