Elif Batuman Quotes

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

I first read Dostoyevsky when I was 14 years old and was entranced. Dostoyevsky truly is a writer for 14-year-olds, and I mean that in the most approving way - approving of his energy, and rage, his endless pessimism, and endless innocence.

'War and Peace' may be the most epic thing ever created by a human being.

Dostoevsky's visible world was a world of sensationalism. He may in the last analysis be a great mystic or a great psychologist; but he almost always reveals his genius on a stage crowded with people who behave like the men and women one reads about in the police news.

Did you know that the original title for War and Peace was War, What Is It Good For?

There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that's not enough anymore.

When I read War and Peace in Norway, really far away from humanity for a long time, it was such an amazing, affirming blast of "humanity" in all forms. It totally cracked my mind-nut open and rainbows shot out. I loved humanity and being alive, rather than wanting to bury my head in the snow.

I have to admit that I only read 'War and Peace' when I was 40. But I knew the basics before then.

I went to college and studied writing, and I got involved in theater. It's always been my passion.

I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

A great writer is a great writer... Tolstoy was not a woman, but 'Anna Karenina' is still a pretty good book.

When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation.

When I was growing up, 'Anna Karenina' was one of my favourite books.

Catch on fire and people will come for miles to see you burn.

I never saw a hotter argument on so unexciting a subject.

Commentary sometimes works best when it makes people angry.

I don't really have a bucket list, but if I did, one entry would be to dust off my college Russian and spend a big chunk of a year reading, or trying to read, 'War and Peace' as it was meant to be read, in Russian, with all that rumbly rocks-on-rocks poetry inherent to the language.

I always really loved Russian literature, and I think Tolstoy's writing is full of a sense of melancholy and humanity, so it seems really modern.

I'd never done any Beckett before 'Krapp,' and I haven't done any of his other plays since. I've always felt that 'Krapp' is an autobiographical piece.

Chekhov was capable of casually tossing off deplorable comments in his letters, combined with a very modern anger against anti-Semitism.

When I am teaching, I first give out Tolstoy's 'Childhood,' his first published book. It is so transparent. It gives you exactly what it was like to be on a Russian estate in 1830. You are there. And that is the hope when you sit down and write still, I think - that you can transmit something of what life is like now.

Some people criticise me for not being animated enough, for sitting in stands and not showing any passion. I come down, get involved in a couple of situations and all of a sudden, it's a slightly different angle.

The book that made me decide to go into Russian literature was 'Anna Karenina,' which I first read in high school. The thing that appealed to me and constituted its Russianness for me was that it was simultaneously incredibly funny and sad.

Some of my favourite characters have been people like Masha in 'Three Sisters' and Elena in 'Uncle Vanya.'

I might not have been academically gifted - I was bad at maths, and science was a struggle - but I was good at English literature and became hooked on theatre.