“I leafed through the phrase book. If a Martian read it, the Martian would probably decide to avoid Hungary.” — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
“Hungary felt increasingly like reading War and Peace: new characters came up every five minutes, with their unusual names and distinctive locutions,… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
As a grad student and later as a writer, I have found it hard to sustain the pure, almost erotic love of… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
If I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe,… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
One of the things that really impressed me about Anna Karenina when I first read it was how Tolstoy sets you up… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
“I suppressed a sigh. Hungary felt increasingly like reading War and Peace: new characters came up every five minutes, with their unusual… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
From an early age, my favorite thing to read was novels. For years, when I was writing only nonfiction, still I was… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
The problems in the Russian novel are quite similar to the problems of Turkish nationalism and Turkish culture, which was something that… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
Even in novels where the love relationship isn't the focus, I feel like it's often there, and the background is some barometer… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
The novel is like a melancholy form. It's about some kind of disillusionment with the way things are versus the idea of… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
“What does literature do better than anything else? It provides a detailed representation of the inner experience of being alive in a… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
The dominant question for us with regard to literature has become, 'What does this have to do with me, with life as… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
I've been thinking a lot about why it was so important to me to do The Idiot as a novel, and not… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
“I thought maybe Against Nature would be a book about someone who viewed things the way I did - someone trying to… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
Much as there are things about our own life stories that we can learn only from the systematic study of our dreams,… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
Many books have changed my life, but only one has the word 'life-changing' in the title: Marie Kondo's 'The Life-Changing Magic of… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
“The first time I read Isaac Babel was in a college creative writing class. The instructor was a sympathetic Jewish novelist with… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
If you're writing a book where you want to make a positive truth claim, then you should absolutely call it nonfiction or… — 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 this idea that if you want to write, you shouldn't study literature because then you're dissecting what you love, and you… — 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
I actually really wish I had written 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying' as an unreliably narrated novel that is also a self-help… — 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
I am a great admirer of Henry Jeffreys and have been eagerly awaiting his booze and empire book for many years! — 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 Image
“I leafed through the phrase book. If a Martian read it, the Martian would probably decide to avoid Hungary.” — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
You can't invent something you have no epistemological access to. In a way, it's all recombination. — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
Poetry is another space, like love, where we extend that extra credit to the writer. — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
I like to think that I know a lot of words, but I definitely don't know all of them. — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
