ashley

“Music was the only other thing that was layered like that, so much that each new component changed the meaning of the whole. And so much building up and holding back-promising and withholding, and withholding, and withholding. You’re going to die without it. You’re never going to get it. You’re going to die. Here it is.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“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

“Without meaning to, I looked into his eyes. What I saw, it was beyond my pay grade. I went out to get a taxi.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“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