A Quote by Elif Batuman

I try really hard to cultivate the pure love of reading, to make time for it, because it would be really sad to still be a writer without remembering why, on some visceral, emotional level.
What I do is that I really, really try hard to make sure the things that I do comes from a pure place in my heart and my intent is a pure one.
I love the beautiful distractions of the world - television and movies, video games, the Internet in general. But I try really hard to avoid them, because they don't help me become a better writer. They subtract hours from my day. And a writer's main currency is time. Time to daydream, time to walk and think, time to sit and do the work.
I love doing emotional scenes. As I've had a perfect life, I don't really have much to pull from. But it's really fun and not that challenging. It's almost pretty easy. The hardest thing is to try and make people laugh. That's a really hard thing.
The impulse for me to want to make sculpture is because I want to make statements, really, on a purely emotional level. And it's also somewhat of a challenge to see how that can be done with materials and objects that really are not emotional, in and of themselves.
I really don't find revivals very interesting because I like new work a lot. I feel like if you're going to pay me, then let me do what I do and let me try to solve some problems. Let me try to make something fly. Why would I do something that everybody has already done the hard work on? But that's me. Tons of people do revivals really well.
My wife has been incredibly supportive of me as a writer. Trying really hard to make sure I get the space and time I need to work as a writer and being willing to make some of the sacrifices that you have to make to live the life of an artist.
Writing is so hard. Why would you be a writer if you weren't really good at it? If you could be anything else, why would you be a writer?
Little-boy love...the cleanest pain I've ever known. Love without desire, conditions, or limits - a pure and radiant glow in the heart that could make me giddy and sad and glorious all at once. Where does it go? Why, in all their experiments, did the Magi never try to capture that purity in a bottle? Perhaps they couldn't.
Some things are just really difficult to do. That's what I find hard. I usually can find a way to do a character to make it real and work. But sometimes it's a struggle sustaining that, because there's such a level of personal involvement and personal, physical, and emotional distraughtness.
My whole mood or sense can change by virtue of the music that I'm listening to. It really does affect me on a visceral and emotional level.
We [with husband] try and spend time alone, which is really hard to do. Of course, when you have kids they're like: "Why are you going out? You went out last night... you can't go out tonight!" so, you try to do that, and you try and ask somebody to please turn off the football game because you can't stand it any longer and you'd rather talk to them.You try to make time for each other where you can. You try to plan a trip away somewhere.
Impressions are still kind of hard for me and not what I love to do the most, but with characters, I think there's an element of fearlessness. You try to figure out the best reading and wording of the jokes before the show, and then you just really have to go hard.
For the Tintin books were my emotional universe. To read them felt quite simply like being loved: in advance and by an entire world of pure possibility, my future. But to write to the author was to reach out for the lover. Even today, the power of reading one remains visceral: each book acts as a form of transportation, not just to the emotional landscape of this first literary love affair but to very specific memories.
I still make paintings and use the figure; it's hard to do and hard to succeed. On some levels, because I am working with black figures and black pigment, it's even harder because I have to be more responsible for the image. I try to be really careful about the presence the figure projects.
I try not to obfuscate or to be to obscure or to be too cerebral. I like to work on a visceral, emotional level.
Every role that I have taken on has demanded some kind of emotional range. I really, really would love to do a comedy, but that opportunity really hasn't opened up.
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