Elif Batuman Quotes
I had wanted to write 'The Possessed' as fiction, but everyone told me that no one would read a novel about graduate students. It seems almost uncivilized to tell someone writing a novel, 'No, you have to call this a memoir.'
Quotes to Explore
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In the case of my book, I don't think it's really the coming-out gay novel that everyone really needed, even though it was received as such. The boy is too creepy, he betrays his teacher, the only adult man with whom he's enjoyed a sexual experience, etc.
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I just like to stay a little quiet and just do my own thing. If I win a little more, I think I'll get a little bit more attention.
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When my lady and I sit down and watch TV, I find she gets annoyed at characters because they don't do what she would do in the situation. I'm always like, 'Well, she has to do that because that's what the story is.'
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I have no problem with violence, I have no problem playing horrible people.
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Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.
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I made sacrifices willingly; it was what I did best.
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When we assess the impact of technological changes, we tend to downplay things that happened a while ago.
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I just make up lyrics off the top of my head. A lot of times, there's a phrase I really like, and I kind of build the song around that.
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I wonder now how tough you have to be to get big things done.
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Coming up with ideas isn't hard. The real challenge is finding the time to actually build something and then finding a home for it.
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'Vanity' means worthlessness.
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Were women meant to do everything - work and have babies?
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It's very important not to lose your temper in a courtroom, or in anything else you're doing.
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The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. With us there is no nice enquiry as to its being formed or unformed.
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Silk Road to Ruin has all the analysis and it's structured very well. I rely on my notes more and I use direct quotes. But there's nothing like writing about it right away.
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If you take shortcuts, you get cut short.
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Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.
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We create success or failure on the course primarily by our thoughts.
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I babysat kids in a ShopRite, which is a grocery store. They had a babysitting center so that parents could bring their children while they shopped. It was awful. I also was not very good at keeping the kids calm.
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When my children were born, I didn't have them baptized because I felt baptism was about erasing Original Sin - something the Church said children got from their mother - and I absolutely refused to believe women carry Original Sin.
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I never tried Pokemon Go. I figured I'd get too addicted to it. I did play Pokemon Snap on Nintendo 64, so that window is closed for me.
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Tak Fujimoto and I, when we started getting enough of a budget where we could afford the right lenses - 'cause we started out doing low-budget pictures together - we started experimenting with this subjective camera thing. And we kind of fell in love with the idea of using that as our close-up.
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It seems to me that 'women's writing' by nature would not seek equivalence in the male world. It would be a writing that sought to express a distinction, not deny it.
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I had wanted to write 'The Possessed' as fiction, but everyone told me that no one would read a novel about graduate students. It seems almost uncivilized to tell someone writing a novel, 'No, you have to call this a memoir.'
