A Quote by Elif Batuman

Even when I was very small, my mother treated me like a great novelist. She was like: 'Oh, I'm sitting at the breakfast table with Flaubert,' and would say, if she burned some food or was late arriving, 'Don't put this in your novel!'

Elif Batuman

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Arriving Breakfast Burned Even Food Great Late Like Me Mother Novel Novelist Oh Put Say She Sitting Small Some Table Treated Very Would Your

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Elif Batuman
American - Author
Born: 1977

My mother would never say anything I cooked for her was great. She was always a 'Yeah, but' person. When she tasted my food, I used to say to her 'Don't tell me too straight, lie to me!' She couldn't even understand why I was on television.

Gino D'Acampo

One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life. Say thank you.

Cheryl Strayed

My number one inspiration was my mother. She worked two jobs and had breakfast and dinner prepared. I essentially called my mother, The Lion. She's fierce and she's proud. I'd like to think some of that rubbed off on me.

Christopher Judge

[My mother] worked at thrift stores and she didn't have a high school education. She sacrificed everything she had for me and my brothers. I never went without. She showed me that she could put food on the table, buy us Jordans, we had the best clothes and she worked two-three odd jobs.

Cory Hardrict

My mother was superb. Even when I said to her, when I was nineteen, oh, I'm going to India. Her immediate reaction was, oh yes dear, and when are you leaving? She didn't say, oh how could you leave me, your mother? Or wait a bit dear until you get a bit older and you know your own mind. She just said, well, when are you going? And that was because she loved me, not because she didn't love me.

Tenzin Palmo

My mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art.

Isabel Allende

As a late teenager, I had some puppy fat on me, and I noticed that I could put on weight. I have always been very disciplined because my mother was very beautiful, a very pretty woman, but she was immobilised by obesity. At her biggest, she was about 17 stone. And she was always on some sort of fad diet.

Trudie Styler

She still remembered sitting for hours as a little girl and pretending to be a hassock. A foot stool. Because if she could just stay very small, and very quiet, her mother would forget she was there, and then she wouldn't scream about people and places and things that had gone wrong.

Eloisa James

...fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like. Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me? (140)

Toni Morrison

I was raised with a mother who told me that I wouldn't succeed, that I wasn't good enough. Even at the pinnacle of my success, she'd come to a show, and there'd be, like, 10,000 people screaming. And she'd say, "I just don't get it." I think she had so little faith in herself and her abilities as a parent that she couldn't imagine any offspring of hers could do so well. And all that did was drive me to push back. If someone says, "You can't do this," I'm like, "F-ck you! Oh, yes I can, and I will."

Sarah McLachlan

My mother encouraged it so much. She was so supportive. Even if as a kid, I would do the dumbest trick, which now that I look back on some things, she would love it, she would say that's amazing, or if I'd make the ugliest drawing, she would hang it up. She was amazing.

David Blaine

And even if she isn’t—even if by some miracle, she survived the escape and has been squeezing out a living in the Wilds—she would never join forces with the resisters. She would never be violent or vengeful. Not Lena, who used to practically faint when she pricked a finger, who couldn’t even lie to a teacher about being late. She wouldn’t have the stomach for it.

Lauren Oliver

My mother was very passionate about life and she would do anything for us. And she had to fight alone to raise us. We never had a lot of money for extras or anything. She had to work six days a week, and then she would do breakfast, lunch and dinner. She was a super-woman! For me, I don't know how she did it with three kids.

Penelope Cruz

All of a sudden I was Joan [Mad Man] and they're going, "Oh, so she plays a badass in this." And I'm like, "Oh my god, I get to play badasses." Firefly was a little bit of that, but she started out as a mouse and then she turned into a dragon. But I never really had that opportunity. So all of a sudden people were like, "Oh, do you feel like you're being typecast?" I would say, "No, this is just opening the doors." No one thought I could do it and someone finally trusted me to do it.

Christina Hendricks

I was raised by a single mother who made a way for me. She used to scrub floors as a domestic worker, put a cleaning rag in her pocketbook and ride the subways in Brooklyn so I would have food on the table. But she taught me as I walked her to the subway that life is about not where you start, but where you're going. That's family values.

Al Sharpton

My mother says to me, when I'm making a new movie, she says, "Oh, is Steve Buscemi in it?" I'd say, "Yeah." And she, "Oh, then it's going to be a good one." I swear to God, she says that every time. And when I say Steve's not in it, she says, "Oh."

Adam Sandler

A Quote by Elif Batuman

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