Elif Batuman Quotes

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

I strive to be brief but I become obscure.

If somebody writes clearly, you can pretty much tell immediately if something is shallow or deep, whereas if they write with all this duckweed on the surface, you can't tell if the stream is one inch deep or a hundred fathoms.

I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.

I never want to dumb it down. If there's any simplification, it's just a simplification to make sure that the reader understands the point that the character is trying to make.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

Be obscure clearly.

I labor to be brief, and manage to be obscure.

I'd rather not ever make anything overly simple just because I'm scared people won't get it.

Don't express your ideas too clearly. Most people think little of what they understand, and venerate what they do not.

Aiming at brevity, I become obscure.

I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.

Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.

My life won't be a series of either/ors - musician or actor, rock or country, straitlaced or rebellious, this or that, yes or no. The real choices in life aren't that simple.

Writing is sometimes a balancing act between keeping things easily readable and being accurate.

When we don't have information, we go to the simplest outlook, to black and white. But then we have to lie to ourselves. Black is never as black as you're painting it and white is never as white.

If I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.

There's a fine line in being too specific so you can't be too flexible, and being too vague in being specific and people not thinking it's meaningful.

Never be so brief as to become obscure.

Something's that written out is okay, but it's not always a clear indication of what a person means.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.

I love language, and I love the failure of language.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.