American - Author | 1977 -
To think of Tolstoy eating a sandwich is intrinsically kind of funny.
Elif Batuman
FunnyEatingThinkKindSandwich
The first thing I tried to write was a novel, when I took that time off in grad school. Then I didn't finish it. I went back to school, and then I started writing nonfiction kind of by accident.
TimeSchoolWritingBackKindFirst
Actually, I've taught creative writing in Turkey, at an English language university, where the students were native Turkish speakers, but they were writing their essays in English, and they were very interesting - even the sense of structure, the conventions of writing, the different styles of writing.
CreativeWritingLanguageInteresting
I like a novel to have a certain amount of dead time and filler - unremarkable scenery, descriptions of getting from point A to point B, dialogue in which not much is said - in between the parts that are electric. With a long work that you don't read in one sitting, I think that makes for the best reading experience.
WorkTimeBestExperienceReading
I like to think that I know a lot of words, but I definitely don't know all of them.
WordsThinkKnowLikeLotThem
For a Nabokov fan, paging through 'Fine Lines,' which includes a critical introduction and several essayistic evaluations of Nabokov's scientific oeuvre, can feel a bit like reading the second half of 'Pale Fire': one is confronted by a content-rich, almost dementedly tangential commentary on an increasingly inscrutable work.
WorkFireReadingFeelIntroduction
Reading Epictetus, I realized that most of the pain in my life came not from any actual privations or insults but, rather, from the shame of thinking that they could have been avoided.
LifePainReadingThinkingMy Life
When I read that nobody should ever feel ashamed to be alone or to be in a crowd, I realized that I often felt ashamed of both of those things.
AloneFeelNobodyAshamedThings
For much of my adult life, I believed, inaccurately, that I knew the story of Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' - that I remembered it from childhood.
LifeChildhoodStoryChristmasAdult
At the beginning of 'A Christmas Carol,' Scrooge embodies one of the central tenets of depression: that one has always been this way - and always will be.
DepressionBeginningChristmasWay
My parents were born into a secular country. They met in Turkey's top medical school, moved to America in the nineteen-seventies, and became researchers and professors.
MedicalSchoolParentsAmericaBorn
I grew up hearing that if it hadn't been for Ataturk, my grandmother would have been 'a covered person' who would have been reliant on a man for her livelihood. Instead, she went to boarding school, wrote a thesis on Balzac, and became a teacher.
TeacherManSchoolPersonSheUp
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Elif Batuman quotes