Elif Batuman Quotes

I try to tell the story, always. I do not want to be part of it.

Writers are first and foremost observers. We lose ourselves in the watching and then the telling of the world we find. Often we feel on the fringes, in the margins of life. And that's where we belong. What you are a part of, you cannot observe.

In a strange way, you have to have a certain amount of distance from a thing in order to be able to write about it.

I don't see my movies. I think it's healthier and safer to keep a bit of distance. I'm afraid to be disappointed.

I think my narrative is actually pretty interesting if I step back from it and don't engage too much in it, personally or emotionally.

I think a lot of things are written from experience, but then you become a writer and talk about other people's experience and you tell stories. I mean, you can't just tell your own story all the time.

You have to be an outsider to write.

I had always felt that I was an observer, never a participant; that I was watching from behind a thick glass wall as people went about the business of living--and did it with such ease, with a skill that they took for granted and that I had never known.

My natural state is an outsider. I've always felt outside the group, and I've always been analyzing the group.

I think, for me, I have to remember that I'm telling a story in some way.

What interests me very much as a writer is the ability for writing to have our lives to be occupied so vividly by others. I think that's what we long for as writers.

I think to me, all songs are stories.

When I film, there are no emotions. That would be the last thing.

Even when I think of writing fiction, it's being kind of a liar, a storyteller, a weaver, and there's that sense of how much of this is your life. The story is a way you unravel your life from behind a mask.

I write in my own journal when something extraordinary or funny happens. And there's some nice imagery in there. I don't think of what to do with it.

For some reason, my main movie, Lady Sings the Blues, to me really isn't me. I really can let go of Diana Ross when I see the movie. I'm really objective when I'm watching it. I liked that movie so much. That movie was like magic so that when I'm looking at it I'm really not seeing myself, I'm seeing the actress. I'm seeing another person, not the me of me.

I love telling stories. I think of myself as a storyteller, and I don't feel bound by being just a singer or an actress. First, I'm a storyteller, and history is stories - the most compelling stories. There is a lot you can find out about yourself through knowing about history. I have always been attracted to things that are old. I have just always found such things interesting and compelling.

I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.

I think my weakness as a writer is a limited imagination, and I think my strength is a talent for reflecting the world, or sort of curating things out of the world and putting them into books.

In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself.

I tried to put things in perspective but sometimes you're just too close to it.

Pico Iyer describes his writing as "intimate letters to a stranger," and I think that is what the writing process is. It begins with a question, and then you follow this path of exploration.

I seldom get into the mood of the story. It's acting. I go in, I act, I quit. I don't take anything away from it.

I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess.

I'm not trying to convey a message, I'm just trying to tell a story.