I grew up thinking that it was immoral to idealize the past because, in the past, there was slavery and no penicillin. — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
In a way all writers are writing against death, because writing is an attempt to defy the passage of time, to refuse… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
Everyone is used to speaking a slightly different "language" with their parents than with their peers, because spoken language changes every generation… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
It's kind of an embarrassing story - that's why it's called 'The Idiot.' But looking back at your past self, you see… — 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
