Everyone has a certain amount of bad writing to get out of their system. — 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
I always wanted to write novels, even before I had read a lot of novels or had a very good idea of… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
As a novelist, you write about social mores, but not everything can be explained. — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
No time you spend writing will be wasted - even if you write something that's bad. — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
'Constructed Worlds' comes from a novel draft that I wrote in my early twenties and reread/revised only in my late thirties. — 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
It's important not to censor yourself and not to get upset or demoralized when you write bad stuff. — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
One of the stories that really impressed me was 'Anna Karenina.' As a novel, that made an impression on me, showing me… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The book that made me decide to go into Russian literature was 'Anna Karenina,' which I first read in high school. The… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
“Even though I had a deep conviction that I was good at writing, and that in some way I already was a… — 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
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
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 think it's true that, as is often observed, the writer is always an outsider. A writer is someone who is telling… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
In the last volume of In Search of Lost Time, Proust compares himself to Scheherazade: he says he has finally understood the… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
Tolstoy didn't know about steampunk or cyborgs, but he did know about the nightmarishness of steam power, unruly machines, and the creepy… — 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
Writing fiction lets you be a little more emotional and unguarded, a little freer. Writing fictional characters is also really different from… — 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 like a novel to have a certain amount of dead time and filler - unremarkable scenery, descriptions of getting from point… — 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 think any start has to be a false start because really there’s no way to start. You just have to force… — 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
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
I had wanted to write 'The Possessed' as fiction, but everyone told me that no one would read a novel about graduate… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
When in doubt, it is better to do the less conservative thing and to err on the side of the more colorful,… — 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
In a lot of ways, being a writer is a lousy job - grueling, emotionally taxing, terrible hours, no health care -… — 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
