Quote collection
177 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Any intelligent person knows that life is a beautiful thing and that the purpose of life is to be happy," said my father as he watched the three beauties. "But it seems only idiots are ever happy. How can we explain this?"
"I think perhaps it is a generational thing. I talk to younger people and they say, Where is this melancholy city you talk about My Istanbul is a sunny place."
"National consciousness is truly a miraculous thing. When I am not in Turkey I feel even more Turkish than in Istanbul. But when I'm home my European side becomes more apparent."
"The past is always an invented land."
"Listen to me: Life is not about principles; it`s about happiness.` `But if you don`t have any principles, and if you don`t have faith, you can`t be happy at all,` said Kadife. `That`s true. But 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 ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.` `Actually, it`s the other way round. In a poor country, people`s sole consolation comes from their beliefs."
"Heaven was the place where you kept alive the dreams of your memories."
"True literature is more than just a story someone has told. It must provide the reader with the essence of the world on a moral, philosophical and emotional level."
"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."
"My unhappiness protects me from life."
"I need the pain of loneliness to make my imagination work."
"A writer in someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is."
"Whatever anybody says, the most important thing in life is to be happy."
"The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver."
"Turkey, with its political intolerance, as I have described it, is prepared to march forward, to break with its taboo about the Armenians, and is making great strides with respect to human rights and freedom of speech so that it can join the European Union. This alone shows how powerful the European idea is."
"Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight."
"The gap between compassion and surrender is love’s darkest, deepest region."
"Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow."
"When another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free."
"When Turkey began approaching the EU, I wasn't the only one who worried that the dark stain in Turkey's history - or rather the history of the Ottoman Empire - could become a problem one day. In other words, what happened to the Armenians in World War I. That's why I couldn't leave the issue untouched."
"When two people love each other as we do, no one can come between them, no one," I said, amazed at the words I was uttering without preparation. "Lovers like us, because they know that nothing can destroy their love, even on the worst days, even when they are heedlessly hurting each other in the cruelest , most deceitful ways, still carry in their hearts a consolation that never abandons them." (p.191)"