Most people, the minute they meet you, were sizing you up for some competition for resources. It was as if everyone lived in fear of a shipwreck, where only so many people would fit on the lifeboat, and they were constantly trying to stake out their property and identify dispensable people — people they could get rid of.. Everyone is trying to reassure themselves: I'm not going to get kicked off the boat, they are. They're always separating people into two groups, allies and dispensable people.. The number of people who want to understand what you're like instead of trying to figure out whether you get to stay on the boat - it's really limited. Elif Batuman
I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.
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Martha Gellhorn
Self-talk reflects your innermost feelings.
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Asa Don Brown
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.
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C.g. Jung
How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole
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C.g. Jung
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
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C.g. Jung
More Quotes By Elif Batuman
Why was "plain" a euphemism for "ugly, " when the very hallmark of human beauty was its plainness, the symmetry and simplicity that always seemed so young and so innocent. It was impossible not to think that here beauty was one of the most important...
You just go around getting hung up on all the least convenient things--and if the only obstacle in your way is a little extra work, then that's the wonderful gift right there.
Most people, the minute they meet you, were sizing you up for some competition for resources. It was as if everyone lived in fear of a shipwreck, where only so many people would fit on the lifeboat, and they were constantly trying to stake out...
What does literature do better than anything else? It provides a detailed representation of the inner experience of being alive in a given time and place.
It was hard to decide on a literature course. Everything the professors said seemed to be somehow beside the point. You wanted to know why Anna had to die, and instead they told you that 19th century Russian landowners felt conflicted about whether they were...
