“It's so embarrassing and painful to be young.” — Elif Batuman Quote

“It's so embarrassing and painful to be young.”

“My parents were educated in the Turkish system and went straight from high school to medical school; my mom, who had skipped a grade, was dissecting corpses at age seventeen. Growing up in America, I think I envied my parents' education. By comparison, everything I did in school seemed so sort of low-stakes and infantilizing.”

“I grew up hearing that if it hadn't been for Ataturk, my grandmother would have been 'a covered person' who would have been reliant on a man for her livelihood. Instead, she went to boarding school, wrote a thesis on Balzac, and became a teacher.”

“I'm the clumsiest person in the world, so every day brings an embarrassing moment.”

“Nothing is so embarrassing as watching someone do something that you said couldn't be done.”

“Oh, I'd say I like a meal as much as anybody. But I find a certain kind of foodiness silly, gluttonous and embarrassing.”