Quotes from Orhan Pamuk

In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people behave. If you ask me, being cultured and civilized is not about everyone being free and equal; it's about everyone being refined enough to act as if they were. Then no one has to feel guilty.

What was the difference between love and the agony of waiting? Like love, the agony of waiting began in the muscles somewhere around the upper belly but soon spread out to the chest, the thighs, and the forehead, to invade the entire body with numbing force.

it seemed to me that the entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising out memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room

Let me first state forthright that contrary to what we've often read in books and heard from preachers, when you are a woman, you don't feel like the Devil.

The knowledge that she could learn to love a man had always meant more to her than loving him effortlessly, more even than falling in love, and that was why she now felt that she was on the threshold of a new life, a happiness bound to endure for a very long time.

The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion; if you want to live in the paradise where happy mares and stallion live, open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.

It's important, no doubt, to understand the person we love. If we cannot manage this, it's necessary, at least, to believe we understand them. I must confess that over the entire eight years I only rarely enjoyed the contentment of the second possibility, let alone the first.

Herkes bilsin, çok mutlu bir hayat yaÅŸad?m.

WHAT MAKES CITY LIFE MEANINGFUL IS THE THINGS WE HIDE.

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

With the death of my father, it wasn't just the objects of everyday life that had changed; even the most ordinary street scenes had become irreplaceable mementos of a lost world whose every detail figured in the meaning of the whole.

Sometimes I would see them not as mementos of the blissful hours but as the tangible precious debris of the storm raging in my soul.

We had no desire to live in Istanbul, nor in Paris or New York. Let them have their discos and dollars, their skycrapers and supersonics transports. Let them have their radios and their color TV, hey, we have ours, don't we? But we have something they don't have. Heart. We have heart. Look, look how the light of life seeps into my very heart

Snow reminds Ka of God! But I'm not sure it would be accurate. What brings me close to God is the silence of snow.

Hayat?m?n en mutlu an?ym??, bilmiyordum.

Because, as I would always tell myself so many years later, lying here in my bed: 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, isn't that so, Fatma?

But just like believing in God, falling in love is such a sacred feeling that it leaves you with no room for any other passions.

Despite the loss they were suffering, they'd both relaxed - as people do when they realize they've run out of chances for happiness

The sea was as dark as dreams and as deep as sleep

in a brutal country like ours where human life is cheap, it's stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs, high ideals--only people living in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.' 'Actually, it's the other way round. In a poor country the only consolation people can have is the one that comes from their beliefs.

En realidad nadie sabe que está viviendo el momento más feliz de su vida mientras lo vive.

Are you an angel that approaching you should be so terrifying?

If I see my city as beautiful and bewitching, then my life must be so too.

The city's more beautiful at night, you know: the people of the night always tell the truth.