American - Author | 1977 -
When you started looking at the life of Tolstoy, there was so much passion and anger and drama surrounding him.
Elif Batuman
LifePassionAngerLookingYouHim
You base your actions on a projected ending, which you actually don't know. However, when you reach the crucial point, and the pinnacle event doesn't occur, you just need to go on, and something else will happen.
EndingReachYouGoKnowWill
There's this idea that if you want to write, you shouldn't study literature because then you're dissecting what you love, and you should keep your love of literature pure. I think that's kind of silly.
LoveThinkLiteratureSillyYou
I find something very appealing about taking literature very literally.
LiteratureFindSomethingTaking
There's definitely a culture of Russian literature in Turkey. And in the U.S. too, to an extent - especially Dostoevsky.
CultureLiteratureTurkeyTooExtent
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!'
MotherGreatFoodBreakfastMeLate
As a novelist, you write about social mores, but not everything can be explained.
YouWriteEverythingSocialAbout
Being in a heterosexual relationship for a woman is always implicitly a little bit humiliating.
RelationshipWomanAlwaysLittleBit
A lot of what I write is very personal.
PersonalWriteVeryLotI Write
My family is not only not religious, but my parents are both - they're secularists. My father is actually an atheist and feels very strongly about it.
FamilyFatherParentsAtheistOnly
My family is very feminist, and they consider that Islam is not a super feminist religion, which I know people can argue about. But that's - anyway that's how I was brought up, so it would be odd for me to suddenly just up and start wearing a headscarf.
FamilyReligionPeopleMeStartUp
I think it is true that when we're older, we realize the way that people act is... you know, everyone's kind of talking off the cuff, and everyone's, you know, spitballing sometimes.
PeopleThinkTalkingYouSometimes
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