Quotes from Elif Batuman

But to me it seemed that one had always been midway the journey of our life, and would be maybe right up until the moment of death.

I wondered why he had told me something so terrible about himself.

I had just taken an enormous bite of peanut-butter sandwich. I wasn't like Riley, who always seemed able to leave a meal at any point, regardless of how much she had or hadn't eaten. Pushkin said that was the greatest good fortune: being able to leave the table before the wine was drained from the chalice. Not me; I was eating my sandwich. Riley lingered a moment, looking concerned, then left.

How comfortable it was to read about comfortable people!

Well, it made sense. If she could write a book, he would be out of a job. That's why Madame Bovary had to be too dumb and banal to write Madame Bovary: so Flaubert could have a great humane moment where he said he was Madame Bovary. But I wasn't dumb or banal, and I lived in the future. Nobody was going to trick me into marrying some loser, and even if they did, I would write the goddamn book myself.

I forgave him for a lot when he said that. I forgave him for almost everything.

What is style, what is taste; how do you develop a style, how do you develop a taste? Who that we knew had one, how did they get it?

I get that you despise convention, but you shouldn't let it get to the point that you're incapable of saying, 'Fine, thanks,' just because it isn't an original, brilliant utterance. You can't be unconventional in every aspect of life. People will get the wrong idea.

Was this because their neurological hardwiring made them better at systems, while women were better at empathy—because men valued abilities and things, while women valued feelings and people? How could we learn to place less value on feelings and people?

But I was in Russia because I had looked at the literatures of the world and made a choice.

I liked the sweeter ones, but I knew it would sound childish to say so.

For a moment it felt like we weren't in the Danube at all but in the river of time, and everyone was at a different point, though in another sense we were all here at once.

The supermarket had everything. I had never felt so happy to see Whiskas, the cat food.

It couldn't have been depressing, because my mother had worked so hard to make it not be depressing. And yet—was it possible that how hard my mother worked was part of why it had been depressing?

My mother said that that had been wrong. She said that children were people, whose dignity and privacy were worthy of respect. She was the only person I had ever met or heard of who thought or said anything like that.

Remember, you have the best heart and mind, and whatever you do is right. Bye-bye, my sweet. Don't forget the food group.

if you looked at it a certain way it seemed like a monument to destroyed women-- their ossified bodies and shattered psyches.

She must have been jealous," Zita said. "Of course, I hope she feels more secure now. I've moved on. I have a new boyfriend. I'm happy now." "That's great," I said, recognizing the rule that, once you had a new boyfriend, you were happy.

We glided into Budapest at twilight, the city poured over with a viscous glowing blue, lights already blazing on the splendid Western bridges. Upside-down electronic billboards were reflected in the river, advertising Tuborg beer and Minolta cameras.

I had often flipped through a calendar wondering on which of the 366 days (counting February 29) I would die, but it had never once occurred to me to wonder whether I had already met the first person I would have sex with.

I just can't imagine it. I can't imagine you on the other side of the world, at a pay phone on the street.

Deep down I have a talent for well-being. I can feel it.

began to intuit dimly why people drank when they went dancing, and it occurred to me that maybe the reason preschool had felt the way it had was that one had had to go through the whole thing sober.

In America, childhood was a time to play and be innocent, to not have to make money or do anything that counted for anything.