Elif Safak Quotes

When societies go backwards and slide into authoritarianism, nationalism, and tribalism, machismo and sexism are also emboldened.

Elif Safak

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• The U.S. tax code was written by A students. Every April 15, we have to pay somebody who got an A in accounting to keep ourselves from being sent to jail.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Tax
  • April
  • Accounting

• But it's the particularity of a place, the physical experience of being in a place, that makes it onto the page. That's why I don't just do library research. I very rarely write about somewhere I haven't been.

  

  Hari Kunzru
  • Why
  • Experience
  • Library

• I have three Defensive Players of the Year. Only one other player has done that. But being a defensive lineman, it's hard to control the game.

  

  J. J. Watt
  • Done
  • Game
  • Control

• You might say that I'm the Michelangelo of the dress business.

  

  Oleg Cassini
  • Business
  • You
  • Dress

• Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any.

  

  Cab Calloway
  • Fun
  • Never
  • Segregation

• I didn't do the typical things that young kids do.

  

  Balthazar Getty
  • Kids
  • Things
  • Young

• I always trained hard in my life to win the title, and I will train twice as hard to stay at the top.

  

  Rafael dos Anjos
  • Life
  • Win
  • My Life

• Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

  

  Rainer Maria Rilke
  • Human
  • Distance
  • Wonderful

• I'm interested in seeking projects no matter where, no matter if it is in the United States, whether in Chile, whether in Venezuela.

  

  Kate del Castillo
  • Matter
  • United States
  • Where

• It took me a long time to realize you don't choose what you're famous for.

  

  D. B. Sweeney
  • Time
  • Long
  • Famous

• I was always crazy about New York, dependent on it, scared of it - well, it is dangerous - but beyond that there was the pressure of being young and of not yet having done work you really liked, trademark work, breakthrough work.

  

  Harold Brodkey
  • Work
  • Done
  • Crazy

• Oh, I love making independent films, it's such a special, magical thing because you collaborate with a small group of people and everyone's pitching in. You'll see producers setting up the lunch table and the sound guy driving a van. We're all really there because we want to be.

  

  Olivia Thirlby
  • People
  • Lunch
  • Magical

• Trump is a potential disaster as commander-in-chief-uninformed, volatile, poor judgment. Hard to believe this is the candidate of a major political party.

  

  Barry McCaffrey
  • Believe
  • Political
  • Party

• Leave the earth to the strong and athletic,And the sea to adventure upon.But the sun and the sandNo contractor can copy;We lie in the landOf the lotus and poppy;We vegetate, calm and aesthetic,On the beach, on the sand, in the sun.

  

  Ogden Nash
  • Strong
  • Earth
  • Sun

• If I had as many love affairs as you've given me credit for, I would now be speaking to you from a jar at the Harvard Medical School.

  

  Frank Sinatra
  • School

• In 1994, Burns told the editorial board of the Bozeman Chronicle that when asked by a constituent, 'How can you live back there in Washington, DC with all those niggers?' he replied, 'It's a hell of a challenge.' When he was asked about the use of the racial slur, he said: 'I don't know. I never gave it much thought.'

  

  Conrad Burns
  • Live
  • Challenge

• It's all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all.

  

  Anais Nin

• In general, we like to play as a band - guitar, piano, and voice. We also tour with a bass player, a drummer, and somebody who plays keyboard and guitar. We try to play all of our parts and flesh it out to get a lush sound, while also keeping the energy of a three-piece punk act. We want to be the best of all possible worlds.

  

  Andrew Dost Fun.
  • Energy
  • Band
  • Player

• A man, an adult, is precisely what Aeneas is: Achilles had been little more than a passionate boy.

  

  C. S. Lewis
  • Boy

• When you enter a room, you have to kiss his ring. I don't mind, but he has it in his back pocket.

  

  Don Rickles
  • Mind
  • Kiss

• Over the course of history, many Jews have ultimately embraced Christianity - some forcibly, some in order to advance in non-Jewish society, some out of wholehearted belief.

  

  Meir Soloveichik
  • History
  • Society

• Then a strange thing happened. She turned to him and smiled, and as he saw her smile every rag of anger and hurt vanity dropped from him — as though his very moods were but the outer ripples of her own, as though emotion rose no longer in his breast unless she saw fit to pull an omnipotent controlling thread.

  

  F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • She
  • Hurt
  • Smile

• It’s unacceptable to me. The very idea of having children brings out this deep revulsion in me. Most people have children to fulfill their own ambitions, not to give anything. They don’t think about what they can give this child, what they can teach her. They just try to shape her according to some weird script — whatever they couldn’t do in life, like becoming a writer or a doctor. Or some woman who’s almost 30 and thinks no one needs her, she says, ‘Oh, I’ll have a kid. He will love me and become my reason to live.’ And then this kid becomes a soccer ball she and her boyfriend will kick back and forth. I’d rather die from torture because the worst thing in the world is to have a family lifestyle.

  

  Valeria Lukyanova
  • Children
  • Family
  • Worst

• When societies go backwards and slide into authoritarianism, nationalism, and tribalism, machismo and sexism are also emboldened.

  

  Elif Safak