“Every morning I called Aeroflot to ask about my suitcase. "Oh, it's you," sighed the clerk. "Yes, I have your request right… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
I've developed this love of trashy Russian literature. There's a women's detective series that I was obsessed with for a while, written… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
There's definitely a culture of Russian literature in Turkey. And in the U.S. too, to an extent - especially Dostoevsky. — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
“It was hard to decide on a literature course. Everything the professors said seemed to be somehow beside the point. You wanted… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
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… — Elif Batuman Copy Share
“I leafed through the phrase book. If a Martian read it, the Martian would probably decide to avoid Hungary.” — Elif Batuman Copy Share
You can't invent something you have no epistemological access to. In a way, it's all recombination. — Elif Batuman Copy Share
Poetry is another space, like love, where we extend that extra credit to the writer. — Elif Batuman Copy Share
“Svetlana said that she identified with that Madonna more than with any other woman in any other painting. She kept asking me what painting… — Elif Batuman Copy Share
One of the most painful parts of a breakup is having the feeling that your life is a story, and then the other person… — Elif Batuman Copy Share
“Dracula visited the Wolf Department at the Zoological Gardens. "These wolves seem upset at something," he observed. The next morning the cage was all… — Elif Batuman Copy Share
I like to think that I know a lot of words, but I definitely don't know all of them. — Elif Batuman Copy Share
“I don't know if I ended up siding with the academics just because I happened to end up in graduate school, or if I… — Elif Batuman Copy Share
People don't become writers because they love having spontaneous, real-world interactions with living people as bodies with clothes in time. — Elif Batuman Copy Share
“Each work of criticism is supposed to build on the body of work, to increase the total sum of human understanding. It's not like… — Elif Batuman Copy Share
Humor is really important to me. All my favorite writers are writers I consider to be funny, including Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, even though that's… — Elif Batuman Copy Share
Every time a meteor comes close to the earth, we all think about the end of the world - but our internal soundtrack doesn't… — Elif Batuman Copy Share
I felt grateful to Ataturk that my parents were so well educated, that they weren't held back by superstition or religion, that they were… — Elif Batuman Copy Share
“For a moment it felt like we weren’t in the Danube at all but in the river of time, and everyone was at a… — Elif Batuman Copy Share
