Writing fiction lets you be a little more emotional and unguarded, a little freer. Writing fictional characters is also really different from writing about real people. In nonfiction, you can only say so much about the people you interact with. After all, they're actual people, their version of their story trumps yours. In a novel, you can build a character, using certain parts or impressions of someone you know, and guessing or inventing others, without having to worry that your guesses or memories or inventions are wrong.
When you invent something, you're drawing on reservoirs of knowledge that you already have. It's only when you're faithful to the truth that somethin… - Elif Batuman
When you invent something, you're drawing on reservoirs of knowledge that you already have. It's only when you're faithful to the truth that somethin…
- Elif Batuman
There are ideas it will be easy to say in the future that we just don't have the language for now. - Elif Batuman
There are ideas it will be easy to say in the future that we just don't have the language for now.
I think time just goes faster and faster. I'm saying this a few months away from my fortieth birthday. I don't know when and if one's identity ever d… - Elif Batuman
I think time just goes faster and faster. I'm saying this a few months away from my fortieth birthday. I don't know when and if one's identity ever d…
The novel form is about the protagonist's struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his fav… - Elif Batuman
The novel form is about the protagonist's struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his fav…
As a grad student and later as a writer, I have found it hard to sustain the pure, almost erotic love of reading I had as a kid - you know, where you… - Elif Batuman
As a grad student and later as a writer, I have found it hard to sustain the pure, almost erotic love of reading I had as a kid - you know, where you…
If you think about Don Quixote, Don Quixote is this guy who wants to live as if he was in a medieval chivalric romance, when actually he lives in six… - Elif Batuman
If you think about Don Quixote, Don Quixote is this guy who wants to live as if he was in a medieval chivalric romance, when actually he lives in six…
There's an amazing line in Marcus Aurelius: "The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, I wish for green things; for this is the… - Elif Batuman
There's an amazing line in Marcus Aurelius: "The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, I wish for green things; for this is the…
Poetry is another space, like love, where we extend that extra credit to the writer. - Elif Batuman
Poetry is another space, like love, where we extend that extra credit to the writer.
I think it's true that, as is often observed, the writer is always an outsider. A writer is someone who is telling stories about what's going on, whi… - Elif Batuman
I think it's true that, as is often observed, the writer is always an outsider. A writer is someone who is telling stories about what's going on, whi…
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