Elif Batuman Quotes About Feelings
-
I've been thinking a lot about why it was so important to me to do The Idiot as a novel, and not a memoir. One reason is the great love of novels that I keep droning on about. I've always loved reading novels. I've wanted to write novels since I was little. I started my first novel when I was seven.I don't have the same connection to memoir or nonfiction or essays. Writing nonfiction makes me feel a little bit as if I'm producing a product I don't consume - it's a really alienating feeling.
→ -
When a novelist manages to describe or evoke something you thought or felt, without realizing that other people also found themselves in the same situation and had the same feelings, it creates that same solidarity. Maybe it's better to think of humor not as a tool to express the solidarity, but a kind of by-product. Maybe the realization "I'm not on my own on this one" is always, or often, funny.
→ -
The novel tradition is the closest thing I have to a religion, and being a part of that tradition means a lot to me. I don't really see - I never have seen - why I should have to forfeit that feeling, or hope, of belonging, just because the stories I want to tell are close to my own experience.
→
Related Authors
-
John Jeremiah Sullivan Writer -
Donald Antrim Novelist -
Lorin Stein Editor -
Isaac Babel Journalist -
Sheila Heti Writer -
Lydia Davis Writer -
Tim Parks Novelist -
Keith Gessen Novelist -
Yiyun Li Writer -
George Plimpton Journalist -
Josip Novakovich Writer -
Emily Gould Author -
Aminatta Forna Writer -
Christopher Ricks Literary critic -
John O'Hara Writer -
-
Gary Shteyngart Writer -
Chad Harbach Writer -
Rick Moody Novelist -
Rivka Galchen Writer