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Either/Or QUOTES

Either/Or QUOTES

1 " I was going to remember, or discover, where everything came from. I was going to do the subtle, monstrous thing where you figured out what you were doing, and why. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

2 " I'm going to become whatever I was going to become. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

3 " What kind of cretins cared more about hammering out a string of inheritance than about discovering universal truths? Historians, that was what kind. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

4 " Was that what was so painful: that nobody had ever come so close to me- nobody had ever seen me, and come right up to me, and kept going, and looked into my eyes so seriously, with so little fear? "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

5 " It was the golden time of year. Every day the leaves grew brighter, the air sharper, the grass more brilliant. The sunsets seemed to expand and melt and stretch for hours, and the brick façades glowed pink, and everything got bluer. How many perfect autumns did a person get? "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

6 " I learned a lot from that, like how much it hurt to see how other people described you, and how things that you said about another person, especially your parents, seemed neutral when addressed to a third party, but lethal when you thought about your parents reading it. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

7 " Near the beginning of “The Portrait of a Lady,” there was mention of an aunt who kept telling people that Isabel was writing a book. In fact, Henry James said, Isabel was not and never had been writing a book. She “had no desire to be an authoress,” “no talent for expression,” and “none of the consciousness of genius,” having only “a general idea that people were right when they treated her as if she were rather superior.” It was one of the few places where Henry James was mean about Isabel.

Well, it made sense. If she could write a book, he would be out of a job. That’s why Madame Bovary had to be too dumb and banal to write “Madame Bovary.” But I wasn’t dumb or banal, and I lived in the future. Nobody was going to trick me into marrying some loser, and even if they did, I would write the goddamn book myself. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

8 " It was happening again now: some pieces of some larger story that I could barely make out were flying into new positions, and I was remembering things I had forgotten, and putting them together differently, and all while I was sitting still and not going anywhere or doing anything—though in another way I was hurtling north at five hundred miles an hour. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

9 " When I woke up in the morning, there was a second or two when I felt light and free, unaware of any reason to feel upset. Then all my knowledge and memories rushed back and a weight descended on my sternum and the creaking started behind my eyes. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

10 " That had probably been written by a professor. I recognized the professor's characteristic delight at not imparting information. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

11 " What kind of cretins cared more about hammering out a string of inheritance than about discovering universal truths? Historians, that was what kind. They would only be happy when they had translated every miraculous book into a product of its historical moment. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

12 " Quality of life": as if we knew it, and could measure it. I wanted to know what it was: the quality of life. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

13 " There was something abstract and gentle about the experience of being ignored—a feeling of being spared, a known impossibility of anything happening—that was consonant with my understanding of love. In theory, of course, I knew that love could be reciprocated. It was a thing that happened, often, to other people. But I was unlike other people in so many ways. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

14 " Trying to explain all the steps was boring and exhausting. I kept imagining Ivan getting bored, or not believing me, and it kept sounding like I was putting the blame on other people, like Svetlana and her mom. When I tried to put the blame on myself, it was also tedious and boring, and in the end I gave up trying to explain anything. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

15 " For some reason, the image that came to my mind was of Peter explaining to someone in a quiet, serious voice that Selin's problems had been more serious than anyone had realized. No way, I thought. I was going to stick around and bury those people. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

16 " Anyway, how could therapy even work on me, when I was so far from sharing Svetlana’s therapist-like belief that people should be healthy and well-adjusted, that they should go to bed at the same time every night, even if they were reading or having an interesting conversation, or that it was great and life-affirming to go hiking with some guy, or to get married? Of course therapy worked for someone who believed those things. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

17 " What had been revealed to me at this sadomasochism-themed party was the true face of all parties: how they were all, in one way or another, sadomasochism-themed. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

18 " I had a powerful sense of having escaped something: of having finally stepped outside the script. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

19 " On the way to the train station, my mother said that she wasn’t going to wash my sheets after I left. Sometimes, she said, she slept in my bed for one or two nights, because the bed still smelled like me. She smiled conspiratorially, and I felt my heart constrict. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or

20 " What Svetlana felt for Scott, she said, wasn't a crush, but love. "A crush is about build-
ing up the self, and love is about giving from the self. For love, you have to have a self you're secure with, to give to the other person." I silently absorbed the implication that what I felt for Ivan was only a crush, because I didn't have a self I was secure with. "

― Elif Batuman , Either/Or