Books Quote by Elif Batuman

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

— Elif Batuman

“k are you writing?’ ‘It’s a fictionalised account of the death of Archduke Ferdinand.’ ‘A historical novel then. How interesting. You understand a lot…

— Tom Wood

“One evening, after he’d read a piece about yet another savagery in Bosnia, I saw there were tears in his eyes. ‘Don’t it ever…

— Michael Morpurgo

Speaking as somebody who is half English and half Hungarian, World War I still seems to me a familiar and seismic event, as if…

— Michael Korda

“I reached over, opened it in the middle, and began reading Tolstoy's War and Peace. Nothing had changed. It was still a lousy book.”

— Charles Bukowski

I first read War And Peace about 100 years after Tolstoy wrote it.

— Simon Schama

“War is a war. Everywhere is hard and bloody, but the Balkans in it bring their coloring and passion. Someone happened to be on…

— Zlatko Topčić

I've never read anything so badly written that got published. It made 'Twilight' look like 'War and Peace.'

— Salman Rushdie

“There was a time in my life when I did a fair bit of work for the tempestuous Lucretia Stewart, then editor of the…

— Christopher Hitchens

“Too many people learn about war with no inconvenience to themselves. They read about Verdun or Stalingrad without comprehension, sitting in a comfortable armchair,…

— Guy Sajer

In Guinea I could read [Franz] Kafka. I re-discover in him my own discomfort.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

“Home before the leaves fall' the soldiers all shouted to their families in August 1914 as they marched toward an enemy who felt the…

— Jamie H. Cockfield