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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All four majors are definitely a priority.
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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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Jobs mean freedom for workers to support their families.
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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 was never honest. My father died, and I had never said to him, 'I'm gay.' I knew what I was, but I had to pretend not to be that to avoid the beatings.
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An interview has become such a confrontational thing. It makes you very defensive.
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In war films, even more than in other kinds of documentary, we've come to think that shaky, poor-quality footage is somehow more authentic than something classically 'well shot.'
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I told my son, who's 11, "Look, I don't care if you curse - it's other people that care." So we tried that experiment, and he just cursed all the time. And I was like, "All right, now I care that you curse." You try to have this idealized view, and it's like, "I don't care." But it's just going to cause chaos.
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Soccer is taken extremely seriously in Turkey.
