Quotes from Orhan Pamuk

Thoughts ramble through my head like nervous burglars in a pitch-black house.

As I was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, it occurred to me that if all else failed, a man could at least kiss himself, and I stared in to the mirror, conjuring up the memory of the couple in the film. I couldn't get the image of their lips out of my mind. But by now I'd realised I'd not even be kissing myself; I'd be kissing the mirror.

People don't know when they're happy, at least not while it's going on.

What is the meaning of it all, of this...of this world? 'Mystery', I heard in my thoughts, or perhaps, 'mercy', but I wasn't certain of either.

BaÅŸkalar? doÄŸaya bak?nca orada kendi s?n?rlar?n?, yetersizliklerini, korkular?n? görürler. Sonra kendi zay?fl?klar?ndan korkup doÄŸan?n s?n?rs?zl???, büyüklüÄŸü, derler buna.

But no one believes in that way what he reads in a novel...Oh yes they do. If only to see themselves as wise and superior and humanistic, they need to think of us as sweet and funny, and convince themselves that they sympathize with the way we are and even love us.

Çünkü bana göre siyaset, en sonunda bizim gibi olmayanlar? kararl?l?kla anlamama, romanc?l?k ise anlama iÅŸidir.

Only imbeciles are innocent.

My death conceals an appalling conspiracy against our religion, our traditions and the way we see the world. Open your eyes, discover why the enemies of the life in which you believe, of the life you're living, and of Islam, have destroyed me. Learn why one day they might do the same to you.

people who make fun of everything can never truly fall in love, nor truly believe in God.

Más interesante era verme la nuca, algo que todavía me provoca un escalofrío haciéndome pensar que mi cuerpo es en realidad un extraño que hace años que llevo encima.

recuerdo que lo que hace especial a una ciudad no son solo su topografía ni las apariencias concretas de edificios y personas, la mayor parte de las veces creadas a partir de casualidades, sino los recuerdos que ha ido reuniendo la gente que, como yo, ha vivido cincuenta años en las mismas calles, las letras, los colores, las imágenes y la consistencia de las casualidades ocultas o expresas, que es lo que mantiene todo unido.

AÅŸk birisine sar?lma, onunla ayn? yerde olma özlemidir. Onu kucaklayarak, bütün dünyay? d??arda b?rakma arzusudur. Ä°nsan?n ruhuna güvenli bir s???nak bulma özlemidir.

Don't worry—love that blooms this fast is just as fast to wither

As in many other cities, money no longer had any value in Istanbul. At the time I returned from the East, bakeries that once sold large one-hundred drachma loaves of bread for one silver coin now baked loaves half the size for the same price, and they no longer tasted the way they did during my childhood.

this, then, is how we first came across the fearsome secret history of turkey's mannequins.

RötuÅŸlanm?? fotoÄŸraflar ruhlar? öldürüyor.

I asked him about his enemies. He began to count them. The list went on and on.... - Conversations with Yahya Kemal

Like most Istanbul Turks I had little interest in Byzantium as a child. I associated the word with spooky, bearded, black-robed Greek Orthodox priests, with the aqueducts that still ran through the city, with the Hagia Sophia and the red brick walls of old churches. To me, these were remnants of an age so distant there was little need to know about it. Even the Ottomans who conquered Byzantium seemed very far away.

Writers like Pierre Loti, by contrast, make no secret of loving Istanbul and the Turkish people for the opposite reason: for the preservation of their eastern particularity and their resistance to becoming western.

so the knowledge of their presence remained, for the time being, strictly within the bounds of people's private thoughts, lying dormant in a corner of their minds like a secret language spoken only at home.

Mi ignorancia hacía mi victoria aún más insoportable, pero mi modestia y mi vergüenza aliviaban mis culpas.

no creo que podamos vivir sin imitar a otros, sin querer ser otros.

To travel along the Bosphorus, be it in a ferry, a motor launch, or a rowboat, is to see the city house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood, and also from afar as a silhouette, an ever-mutating mirage.