Elif Batuman Quotes
Even when I was very small, my mother treated me like a great novelist. She was like: 'Oh, I'm sitting at the breakfast table with Flaubert,' and would say, if she burned some food or was late arriving, 'Don't put this in your novel!'
Quotes to Explore
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J. J. Abrams is a director that I've admired for a long time, from the very first scripts he wrote - including 'Regarding Henry,' which I was in.
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The mill cannot grind with the water that is past.
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I felt audiences are happier to take comedy people who play darker people because there's a link between the psychosis of comedy and the psychosis of being a twisted character.
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Acting is doing. It's not speaking; it's behavior. It's something happening, even if you're only listening.
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I played small forward on the basketball team. I also ran the 300 hurdles.
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My good works, however wretched and imperfect, have been made better and perfected by Him Who is my Lord: He has rendered them meritorious. As to my evil deeds and my sins, He hid them at once. The eyes of those who saw them, He made even blind; and He has blotted them out of their memory.
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I made a very slatternly mother, notably unkeen on housework, unaware that homes need to be cleaned now and then, and too often to be found with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other.
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When I cook a meal, I like to serve things one by one and keep them separate. I get that from my father - he's such a purist. Some people even put their desserts on the main plate. It's just wrong.
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I certainly feel sad about the alienation from my son.
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Time was God's first creation.
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In 1853, American warships bullied Japan out of centuries of virtual isolation and into the modern world. The threat of force compelled Japan, like India and China before it, to accept trade agreements that were economically ruinous and eroded national sovereignty.
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Someone once said that you can make the choice between getting old and getting creepy, and I think getting old is the way to go.
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Living in Malibu is like being in a bubble, so discovering others that are so different from me has been incredibly gratifying.
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The other thing about FEMA, my understanding is that it was supposed to move into the Department of Homeland Security... and be what it was, but also having a lot of lateral communication with all those others involved in that issue of homeland security.
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David Fincher's work has all been incredibly well-received on Netflix, and Kevin Spacey's films have all worked on Netflix.
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I'm very, very focused on my children. In fact, I'm very religious about having breakfast with them every morning, having dinner with them every evening, and spend all the weekends with them that I don't work. So as long as I'm not traveling, I'm always with them and I go to their soccer and tennis matches.
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What you see is what you get.
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Auditions are not a natural environment, and you feel judged, even though everyone is just excited to find the right person.
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Mere imagination would indeed be mere trifling; only no imagination is mere.
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If I couldn't read, I couldn't live.
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I was popular. I wasn't the most popular. But I definitely held my own.
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I'm terrible in high heels. I'm so bad.
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At any comic book convention in America, you'll find aspiring cartoonists with dozens of complex plot ideas and armloads of character sketches. Only a small percentage ever move from those ideas and sketches to a finished book.
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Even when I was very small, my mother treated me like a great novelist. She was like: 'Oh, I'm sitting at the breakfast table with Flaubert,' and would say, if she burned some food or was late arriving, 'Don't put this in your novel!'
