Quotes About Orhan Pamuk

I had the feeling that focusing on objects and telling a story through them would make my protagonists different from those in Western novels - more real, more quintessentially of Istanbul.

I strongly believe that the art of the novel works best when the writer identifies with whoever he or she is writing about. Novels in the end are based on the human capacity, compassion, and I can show more compassion to my characters if I write in a first person singular.

At first my publisher had reservations about publishing it in the form you are familiar with.

I always enjoy impersonating my characters in the first-person singular.

I have been attacked in Turkey more for my interviews than for my books. Political polemicists and columnists do not read novels there.

People look at me as sort of a diplomat for Turkey, which by nature, I'm not; I don't want to be. It's again about that playfulness. Being Turkey's voice or representative is not playful, it's not childlike; it makes me self-conscious, kills the child in me.

I don't like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels … I keep my deep radical things for my novels.

Contrary to what is commonly believed, all murderers are men of extreme faith rather than unbelievers.

'Snow' is my most popular book in the United States. But in Turkey, it was not as popular as 'My Name is Red,' or even 'The Museum of Innocence,' because the secular leaders didn't want this bourgeois Orhan trying to understand these head-scarf girls.

N]othing is as surprising as life. Except for writing. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the only consolation.

The power of things inheres in the memories they gather up inside them, and also in the vicissitudes of our imagination, and our memory — of this there is no doubt.

every life is like a snowflake: individual existences might look identical from afar, but to understand one´s own eternally mysterious uniqueness one had only to plot the mysteries of one´s own snowflake.

For me it has always been a city of ruins and of end-of-empire melancholy. I've spent my life either battling with this melancholy or (like all ?stanbullus) making it my own.

The drinking of coffee is an absolute sin! Our Glorious Prophet did not partake of coffee because he knew it dulled the intellect, caused ulcers, hernia and sterility; he understood that coffee was nothing but the Devil's ruse.

Contrary to what is commonly believed, all murderers are men of extreme faith rather than unbelievers.

in this night, pure and everlasting, like an old fairy tale, being Turkish felt infinitely better than being poor.

The gulf between the private and public views of our countrymen is evidence of the power of the state. —Celâl Salik, Milliyet

Sen Rousseau filan diyorsun. Ne ilgisi var onlar?n burayla?.. Rousseau Türkiye'de yaÅŸasayd? bir falakadan geçirir adam ederlerdi.

newer and more modern cemeteries, devoid of cypress trees or any other vegetation, were usually situated well outside the new quarters and surrounded by tall concrete walls, just like factories, military bases, and hospitals.

For a dog, you see, nothing is as satisfying as sinking his teeth into his miserable enemy in a fit of instinctual wrath.

would very much like to see you. We await your company at supper on May 19.

I'm saying this to you as someone who's spent years as a political exile. Listen to me: Life's not about principles, it's about happiness.

What would he have to say about the Nabokov Museum in the same city, which during the Stalin era had served as the office of the domestic board of censors?

Sigara ister misin, sinirini, öfkeni al?r. Süleyman'?n hâlâ öfkesi burnunda.