Michael Busse

“I'm 26," she said, as if it were bad news she had received only recently. "It isn't the age I feel like."

"What age do you feel like?"

"Nineteen, like you."

But to me, 19 still felt old and somehow alien to who I was. It occurred to me that it might take more than a year, maybe as many as seven years, to learn to feel 19.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“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

“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.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“Why was it considered laudable, sociable, and funny to do this thing that made a person feel like they were dying, and did on occasion induce death? Of course, you couldn't have a party without alcohol. I understood this. I understood the reason. The reason was that people were intolerable. But wasn't there any way around that? Juho was talking about different research that people were doing into alcoholism in Finland. Why was nobody researching the more direct issue, of trying to make people less intolerable?”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or