Books Quotes by Elif Batuman

There's definitely a culture of Russian literature in Turkey. And in the U.S. too, to an extent - especially Dostoevsky.

— Elif Batuman

“I leafed through the phrase book. If a Martian read it, the Martian would probably decide to avoid Hungary.”

— Elif Batuman

I always wanted to write novels, even before I had read a lot of novels or had a very good idea of…

— Elif Batuman

Russian literature got me interested in what literature means.

— Elif Batuman

I am a great admirer of Henry Jeffreys and have been eagerly awaiting his booze and empire book for many years!

— Elif Batuman

I find something very appealing about taking literature very literally.

— Elif Batuman

If I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe,…

— Elif Batuman

I had wanted to write 'The Possessed' as fiction, but everyone told me that no one would read a novel about graduate…

— Elif Batuman

From an early age, my favorite thing to read was novels. For years, when I was writing only nonfiction, still I was…

— Elif Batuman

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

The first thing I tried to write was a novel, when I took that time off in grad school. Then I didn't…

— Elif Batuman

“What does literature do better than anything else? It provides a detailed representation of the inner experience of being alive in a…

— Elif Batuman

“I thought maybe Against Nature would be a book about someone who viewed things the way I did - someone trying to…

— Elif Batuman

Much as there are things about our own life stories that we can learn only from the systematic study of our dreams,…

— Elif Batuman

When you're reading a novel, I think the reason you care about how any given plot turns out is that you take…

— Elif Batuman

I like a novel to have a certain amount of dead time and filler - unremarkable scenery, descriptions of getting from point…

— Elif Batuman

Nom de Plume uses the device of the pseudonym to unite the likes of Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, Fernando Pessoa, and Patricia…

— Elif Batuman

“I wanted to know how it was going to turn out, like flipping ahead in a book. I didn't even know what…

— Elif Batuman

The first modern novel was already a product, even an expression, of negative criticism: 'Don Quixote' contains a quite explicit critique of…

— Elif Batuman

The dominant question for us with regard to literature has become, 'What does this have to do with me, with life as…

— Elif Batuman

“It was hard to decide on a literature course. Everything the professors said seemed to be somehow beside the point. You wanted…

— Elif Batuman

“Hungary felt increasingly like reading War and Peace: new characters came up every five minutes, with their unusual names and distinctive locutions,…

— Elif Batuman

One of the things that really impressed me about Anna Karenina when I first read it was how Tolstoy sets you up…

— Elif Batuman

“The first time I read Isaac Babel was in a college creative writing class. The instructor was a sympathetic Jewish novelist with…

— Elif Batuman

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

“I suppressed a sigh. Hungary felt increasingly like reading War and Peace: new characters came up every five minutes, with their unusual…

— Elif Batuman

One of the stories that really impressed me was 'Anna Karenina.' As a novel, that made an impression on me, showing me…

— Elif Batuman

Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time,' especially 'Time Regained,' made me think differently about what the novel is and can do. Then…

— Elif Batuman

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

Even when I was very small, my mother treated me like a great novelist. She was like: 'Oh, I'm sitting at the…

— Elif Batuman

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

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

The novel form is about the protagonist's struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his…

— Elif Batuman

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

I do think of 'The Idiot,' in a way, as a self-standing book about a certain struggle to make meaning, the struggle…

— Elif Batuman

The problems in the Russian novel are quite similar to the problems of Turkish nationalism and Turkish culture, which was something that…

— Elif Batuman

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

The book that made me decide to go into Russian literature was 'Anna Karenina,' which I first read in high school. The…

— Elif Batuman

I do like the idea of the novel of repressed college students being a contemporary novel of courtship! I guess what I…

— Elif Batuman

As a grad student and later as a writer, I have found it hard to sustain the pure, almost erotic love of…

— Elif Batuman