Quotes from Orhan Pamuk

As a fatherless son, so a sonless father will be embraced by none. —FERDOWSI, Shahnameh

If you act as if nothing has happened, and if nothing more comes of it, you will indeed find that nothing has happened after all.

In reaction to being overly logical we'll feed fantasies for weeks and years on end, and one day we'll see something, a face, an outfit, a happy person, and suddenly realize that our dreams will never come true; thus, we come to understand that a particular maiden won't be permitted to marry us or that we'll never reach such-and-such a station in life.

in the twenty-first century, with the era of traditional empires and colonies long since behind us, the word "nationalist" has become a label almost always employed to lend prestige to the behavior of people who tend to agree with everything their government says, have no other aim but to curry favor with those in power, and lack the courage to stand up to authority.

If we go to Frankfurt together it won't be long, I'm sure, before I love you. I'm not like you; it takes me longer than two days to fall in love with someone. If you're patient, if you don't break my heart with your Turkish jealousies, I'll love you deeply.

patriots who rose up in revolt against their colonizers and ran headfirst, flags aloft, toward the invaders' relentless machine guns.

eu a amava como se reconhecesse em você meu próprio corpo, como se você fosse minha alma perdida, como se eu enfim compreendesse, tomado pela dor e a alegria, que eu era uma outro pessoa;

Only a poet—not a novelist, and certainly not a historian—would be able to describe the despair that began to seep through the city toward the middle of June.

Street vendors are the songbirds of the streets, they are the life and soul of Istanbul, he said.

Like a genuine master miniaturist at the moment of greatest inspiration, holding his reed under the direct guidance of Allah, yet still able to take into consideration the form and composition of the entire page, Black continued to direct our place in the world from a corner of his mind even through his highest excitement

To God belongs the East and the West ,' I said in Arabic like the late Enishte.

Food Tastes Better When It's Got Some Dirt in It

Cuánto podemos alguna vez saber sobre el amor y el dolor en otro corazón? ¿Cuánto podemos esperar entender a quienes han sufrido la angustia más profunda, una mayor privación, y más decepciones aplastamiento que nosotros mismos hemos conocido

I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it.

In certain miserable workshops, as in certain miserable families, everyone speaks in a different voice for years without acknowledging that happiness is born of harmony, and that as a matter of course, harmony becomes happiness.

The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he felt inside him the silence of snow.

the desolation and remoteness of the place hit him with such force that he felt God inside him.

Razlog naše povezanosti s Allahom ne leži u kako zapadnjaci tvrde teškom našem siromaštvu, nego u ?injenici da bismo više od svih ostalih željeli saznati što nam je uloga na ovome svijetu i što nas o?ekuje na drugome.

Authoritarianism, an unrealistic occidental imagination - these issues will never be settled. Turkey will continue to take Europe as a model; it will continue to pursue its search for democracy.

Idealism, unrealistic idealism, is always contrasted with the reality of the people, of the man in the street. The details of daily life are always more convincing than the political fantasies of the earlier generations.

Self-hatred is OK. I have self-hatred, too. It's OK. What's bad is if you don't know how to get out of it, don't know how to manage it. Self-hatred is, in fact, a good thing if you can clearly see the mechanism of it, because it helps you to understand others.

Age had not made him less handsome, as is so often the case; it had simply made him less visible.

I sometimes feel nervous because I give stupid answers to certain pointless questions. It happens in Turkish as much as in English. I speak bad Turkish and utter stupid sentences.

In the mornings I used to say goodbye to my wife like someone going to work. I'd leave the house, walk around a few blocks, and come back like a person arriving at the office.