“When you started looking at the life of Tolstoy, there was so much pas...” — Elif Batuman Quote

“When you started looking at the life of Tolstoy, there was so much passion and anger and drama surrounding him.”

“My family is not only not religious, but my parents are both - they're secularists. My father is actually an atheist and feels very strongly about it.”

“I kept thinking about the uneven quality of time--the way it was almost always so empty, and then with no warning came a few days that felt so dense and alive and real that it seemed indisputable that that was what life was, that its real nature had finally been revealed. But then time passed and unthinkably grew dead again, and it turned out that that fullness had been an aberration and might never come back.”

“The anger of a person who is strong, can always bide its time.”

“Con men look for human frailty to exploit. This is most often greed. Trump found a different vice: anger. The emotional are always the most susceptible to manipulation.”

“If you feel like there is going to be an emotional reaction that won't be helpful to resolve the situation, anger or other things, disarm the situation in some way, and you can use different techniques to do that.”