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
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 you invent something, you're drawing on reservoirs of knowledge that you already have. It's only when you're faithful to the truth… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
I thought clarity of communication was the most important thing in writing, and if you really cared about getting your idea across,… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
I try really hard to cultivate the pure love of reading, to make time for it, because it would be really sad… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
Actually, I've taught creative writing in Turkey, at an English language university, where the students were native Turkish speakers, but they were… — 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
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
