Quotes by "Orhan Pamuk"

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.

Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world.

Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love?

Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.

After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy.

I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.

There's a lot of pride involved in my refusal to believe in god.

لم يكن الرب أكثر ما أخافني لكن اولئك الذين غالوا في الإيمان به. وكان الشيء الثاني الذي يرعبني غباء الورعين، الذي لا يمكن أبداً مقارنة حكمهم بحكم الرب - حاشا للرب- الذي يعبدونه من كل قلوبهم

Our wealthy, Westernized classes are so obsessed with individualism, they’ve forgotten how to be themselves, let alone how to be individuals,” he said. “These Westernized Turks are too conceited to believe in God. Their individuality is all they care about. Most choose not to believe in God just to prove they’re not like everyone else, though they won’t even acknowledge that’s the reason why. But faith is precisely about being like everyone else. Religion is the haven and the consolation of the meek.

The greatest happiness is when the eye discovers beauty where neither then mind conceived of nor the hand intended any.

Perhaps one day someone from a distant land will listen to this story of mine. Isn't this what lies behind the desire to be inscribed in the pages of a book? Isn't it just for the sake of this delight that sultans and viziers proffer bags of gold to have their histories written?

Most of the time it's not the Europeans who belittle us. What happens when we look at them is that we belittle ourselves. When we undertake the pilgrimage, it's not just to escape the tyranny at home but also to reach to the depths of our souls. The day arrives when the guilty must return to save those who could not find the courage to leave.

In our household doubts more troubling than these were suffered in silence. The spiritual void I have seen in so many of Istanbul's rich, Westernised, secularist families is evident in these silences. Everyone talks openly about mathematics, success at school, football and having fun, but they grapple with the most basic questions of existence - love,compassion, religion, the meaning of life, jealousy, hatred - in trembling confusion and painful solitude. They light a cigarette, give their attention to the music on the radio, return wordlessly to their inner worlds.

My fear was not the fear of God but, as in the case of the whole Turkish secular bourgeoisie, fear of the anger of those who believe in God too zealously(...) I experienced the guilt complex as something personal, originated less from the fear of distancing myself from God than from distancing myself from the sense of community shared by the entire city .

The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life

عشقه که آدما ابله میکنه یا فقط ادمای احمق عاشق میشن؟

Clocks and calendars do not exist to remind us of the Time we've forgotten but to regulate our relations with others and indeed all of society, and this is how we use them.

Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.

Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head.

The challenge is to lend conviction even to the voices which advocate views I find personally abhorrent, whether they are political Islamists or officers justifying a coup.