Quotes from Orhan Pamuk

You can't start out again in life, that's a carriage ride you only take once, but with a book in your hand, no matter how confusing and perplexing it might be, once you've finished it, you can always go back to the beginning; if you like, you can read it through again, in order to figure out what you couldn't understand before, in order to understand life.

Hiçbir ÅŸey, her ÅŸeyi unutabilmenin verdiÄŸi huzurdan deÄŸerli olamaz.

Görücü usulü evlilikte zor olan ÅŸey, kad?n?n hiç tan?mad??? biriyle evlenmesi deÄŸil, hiç tan?mad??? birini sevmek zorunda olmas?d?r, derler... Ama asl?nda bir k?z?n hiç tan?mad??? biriyle evlenebilmesi daha kolay olmal?, çünkü tan?d?kça inan?n erkekleri sevmek daha da zorla??yor.

What makes the marvellous is its peculiar way of being ordinary; what makes the ordinary is its peculiar way of being marvellous.

The only antidote to the loneliness of the streets was the streets themselves.

Maybe you've understood by now that for men like myself, that is, melancholy men for whom love, agony, happiness and misery are just excuses for maintaining eternal loneliness, life offers neither great joy nor great sadness.

Kafamda bir tuhafl?k var, dedi Mevlut. Ne yapsam bu alemde yapayaln?z hissediyorum kendimi. Ben yan?ndayken bir daha asla öyle hissetmeyeceksin, dedi Rayiha anaç bir tav?rla. Mevlut çayhanenin camlar?nda yans?yan Rayiha'n?n hayalinin kendisine ÅŸefkatle sokulduÄŸunu görüp bu an? hiç unutamayaca??n? anlad?.

To be able to see the Bosphorus, even from afar—for ?stanbullus this is a matter of spiritual import that may explain why windows looking out onto the sea are like the mihrabs in mosques, the altars in Christian churches, and the tevans in synagogues, and why all the chairs, sofas, and dining tables in our Bosphorus-facing sitting rooms are arranged to face the view.

When you see a beautiful woman in the street, don't look at her hatefully as if you're about to kill her and don't exhibit excessive longing either; just give her a little smile, avert your eyes, and walk on [1974]. Taking

So you heroically undertook to endure the pains of faithlessness, just to be able to write good poems. But you didn´t realise then that when you lost that voice inside you, you´d end up all alone in an empty universe.

Like most Turkish men of my world who entered into this predicament, I never paused to wonder what might be going on in the mind of the woman with whom I was madly in love, and what her dreams might be; I only fantasized about her.

They, like me, like all of us, had, once upon a time, in a past so far away it seemed like heaven, caught by chance a glimpse of an inner essence, only to forget what it was. It was this lost memory that pained us, reduced us to ruins, though still we struggled to be ourselves.

I do know this much though: If a man resorts to wiles, guile and petty deceptions, it means he's nowhere near being in love.

Whenever I find myself talking of the beauty and the poetry of the Bosphorus and Istanbul's dark streets, a voice inside me warns against exaggeration, a tendency perhaps motivated by a wish not to acknowledge the lack of beauty in my own life. If I see my city as beautiful and bewitching, then my life must be so too. A

Nedir zaman? Bir kaza! Nedir hayat? Bir zaman! Nedir kaza? Bir hayat, yeni bir hayat!

The difference lies in the fact that in Istanbul the remains of a glorious past civilization are everywhere visible. No matter how ill-kept, no matter how neglected or hemmed in they are by concrete monstrosities, the great mosques and other monuments of the city, as well as the lesser detritus of empire in every side street and corner—the little arches, fountains, and neighborhood mosques—inflict heartache on all who live among them. These

la muerte no es el final de todo, eso seguro. Pero, tal y como está escrito en todos los libros, es algo que produce un dolor increíble.

Contrary to popular opinion, a man can shut love out if he wants to. But to do so, he must free himself not only from the woman who has bewitched him but also from the third person in the story, the ghost who has put temptation in his way.

I saw myself in the mirror, and from my expression I had a shocking intimation of the rift between my body and my soul. Whereas my face was drained by defeat and shock, inside my head was another universe: I now understood as an elemental fact of life that while I was here, inside my body was a soul, a meaning, that all things were made of desire, touch, and love, that what I was suffering was composed of the same elements.

Kederden ölüyormuÅŸ gibi yaparak yürüdüm karanl??a kederden ölerek.

Many men believe that no life is determined in advance, that all stories are essentially a chain of coincidences. And yet, even those who believe this come to the conclusion, when they look back, that events they once took for chance were really inevitable.

Ama aÅŸk? diri tutan ÅŸey imkâns?z olmas?d?r.

Le meilleur commencement pour une bonne amitié, c'est un secret.

Mevlut cinselliÄŸin ancak beklemekle, beklemekle gerçekleÅŸecek bir mucize olduÄŸunu on beÅŸ ya??nda böyle anlad?