“'Constructed Worlds' comes from a novel draft that I wrote in my early twenties …” — Elif Batuman

There's a lot to be said for an American-style liberal-arts education, which prevents young people from professionalizing right away.

Soccer is taken extremely seriously in Turkey.

I enjoy a good meal as much as anyone, but I get so confused by nutritional, budgetary, ecological, ethical, aesthetic, and time-management concerns that I often subsist for weeks on instant oatmeal and multivitamins.

Tolstoy didn't know about steampunk or cyborgs, but he did know about the nightmarishness of steam power, unruly machines, and the creepy half-human status of the Russian peasant classes. In 'Anna Karenina,' nineteenth-century life itself is a relentless, relentlessly modern machine, flattening those who oppose it.