Orhan Pamuk

“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.”

“Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world.”

“Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love?”

“Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.”

“After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy.”

“I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.”

“There's a lot of pride involved in my refusal to believe in god.”

“لم يكن الرب أكثر ما أخافني لكن اولئك الذين غالوا في الإيمان به. وكان الشيء الثاني الذي يرعبني غباء الورعين، الذي لا يمكن أبداً مقارنة حكمهم بحكم الرب - حاشا للرب- الذي يعبدونه من كل قلوبهم”

“Our wealthy, Westernized classes are so obsessed with individualism, they’ve forgotten how to be themselves, let alone how to be individuals,” he said. “These Westernized Turks are too conce...”

“The greatest happiness is when the eye discovers beauty where neither then mind conceived of nor the hand intended any.”

“Perhaps one day someone from a distant land will listen to this story of mine. Isn't this what lies behind the desire to be inscribed in the pages of a book? Isn't it just for the sake of th...”

“Most of the time it's not the Europeans who belittle us. What happens when we look at them is that we belittle ourselves. When we undertake the pilgrimage, it's not just to escape the tyrann...”

“In our household doubts more troubling than these were suffered in silence. The spiritual void I have seen in so many of Istanbul's rich, Westernised, secularist families is evident in these...”

“My fear was not the fear of God but, as in the case of the whole Turkish secular bourgeoisie, fear of the anger of those who believe in God too zealously(...) I experienced the guilt complex...”

“The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life”

“عشقه که آدما ابله میکنه یا فقط ادمای احمق عاشق میشن؟”

“Clocks and calendars do not exist to remind us of the Time we've forgotten but to regulate our relations with others and indeed all of society, and this is how we use them.”

“Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.”

“Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments s...”

“The challenge is to lend conviction even to the voices which advocate views I find personally abhorrent, whether they are political Islamists or officers justifying a coup.”