One of the most painful parts of a breakup is having the feeling that your life is a story, and then the other person leaves and takes the story with them. And you’re left there without it. You’re left in this version of life that’s basically a succession of events and interactions that don’t seem to be going anywhere. Elif Batuman Read Quote
The first thing I tried to write was a novel, when I took that time off in grad school. Then I didn’t finish it. I went back to school, and then I started writing nonfiction kind of by accident. Elif Batuman Read Quote
From an early age, my favorite thing to read was novels. For years, when I was writing only nonfiction, still I was reading almost exclusively novels. It’s weird to be producing something that you don’t consume. It feels really alienating. Elif Batuman Read Quote
Actually, I’ve taught creative writing in Turkey, at an English language university, where the students were native Turkish speakers, but they were writing their essays in English, and they were very interesting – even the sense of structure, the conventions of writing, the different styles of writing. Elif Batuman Read Quote
I think it is true that when we’re older, we realize the way that people act is… you know, everyone’s kind of talking off the cuff, and everyone’s, you know, spitballing sometimes. Elif Batuman Read Quote
My family is not only not religious, but my parents are both – they’re secularists. My father is actually an atheist and feels very strongly about it. Elif Batuman Read Quote
The book that made me decide to go into Russian literature was ‘Anna Karenina,’ which I first read in high school. The thing that appealed to me and constituted its Russianness for me was that it was simultaneously incredibly funny and sad. Elif Batuman Read Quote
