Elif Batuman Quotes

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.

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.

Elif Batuman

Tags: literature, neuro lit crit, theory

It can be really exasperating to look back at your past. What’s the matter with you? I want to ask her, my younger self, shaking her shoulder. If I did that, she would probably cry. Maybe I would cry,...

Elif Batuman

It can be really exasperating to look back at your past. What’s the matter with you? I want to ask her, my younger self, shaking her shoulder. If I did that, she would probably cry. Maybe I would cry,...

Elif Batuman

About Author

Elif Batuman (born 1977) is an American author, academic, and journalist. She is the author of three books: a memoir, The Possessed, and the novels The Idiot, which was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Either/Or. Batuman is a staff writer for The New Yorker.