Quotes About Batuman

The one text that most changed my opinion on criticism was probably Freud's 'Interpretation of Dreams,' which I read in college.

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.

ended up having dinner with the Nagys. Everything was covered in sour cream.

neither of us was capable of acting differently, and each viewed the other with an admiration that was inseparable from pity.

He felt to me increasingly like the parody of a love interest.

For some reason she leaves a very strong impression on me. She looks exactly how I picture Nadja, André Breton's Nadja.

Most government majors belonged to a social type known as "gov jocks.

But, for some reason, the laws of their universe didn't allow them to openly oppose you. All they would do was smile fixedly and try to tell you not to take so many classes and, if you smiled fixedly back for long enough, they would eventually sign the petition.

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

I had wanted to write The Possessed as fiction, but everyone told me that no one would read a novel about graduate students. It seems almost uncivilized to tell someone writing a novel, "No, you have to call this a memoir."

As a novelist, you write about social mores, but not everything can be explained.