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

“Even though I had a deep conviction that I was good at writing, and that in some way I already was a…

— Elif Batuman

Everyone has a certain amount of bad writing to get out of their system.

— Elif Batuman

If you are in a breakup, you might as well go all the way and spend the summer in Samarkand, with no…

— Elif Batuman

“I found myself remembering the day in kindergarten when the teachers showed us Dumbo, and I realized for the first time that…

— Elif Batuman

Most Americans have probably heard the song 'Santa Claus Is Coming to Town' about a billion times in the supermarket alone.

— Elif Batuman

The Himalayan glaciers, China's trade surplus, Olympic ice hockey - the world is full of pressing subjects that people never consult me…

— Elif Batuman

“But the Beatles turned out to be one of the things you couldn’t avoid, like alcohol, or death.”

— 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

One of my favorite literary theorists, Mikhail Bakhtin, wrote that the defining characteristic of the novel is its unprecedented level of "heteroglossia"…

— Elif Batuman

“You just go around getting hung up on all the least convenient things--and if the only obstacle in your way is a…

— Elif Batuman

Writing fiction lets you be a little more emotional and unguarded, a little freer. Writing fictional characters is also really different from…

— 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 first time I held an African drum in my hands was at Koc University in a forest in the northern suburbs…

— 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

Lists are based on realism - on the coldly contemplated finitude of resources.

— Elif Batuman

It's possible to watch 'Gone Girl' and feel that you have seen something terribly bleak. But it's also possible to receive it…

— Elif Batuman

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

When I was growing up, many of my relatives had never seen a black person before. Today, hundreds, maybe thousands of Africans…

— Elif Batuman

It's important not to censor yourself and not to get upset or demoralized when you write bad stuff.

— 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

“I kept looking around the bleachers at the audience, middle-aged people in practical clothes. Every single one of them cared about love,…

— 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

There are ideas it will be easy to say in the future that we just don't have the language for now.

— Elif Batuman

A lot of fiction doesn't answer a question that any reasonable person would ever ask.

— Elif Batuman