"No one drives me into exile, not even the nationalists."
Read quote
3 likes
Quote collection
Orhan Pamuk quotes (page 8 of 9)
177 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"It's such a shame that we know so little about our own country, that we can't find it in our hearts to love our own kind. Instead we admire those who show our country disrespect and betray its people."
Read quote
3 likes
"I very much enjoy reading other writers' diaries, mainly because it makes me ask myself: Are they like you? How do they think?"
Read quote
3 likes
"I am proud to be a Turk, and to write in Turkish about Turkey - and to have been translated into about 40 languages. But I don't want to politicize things by dramatizing them."
Read quote
3 likes
"Many great authors of the 19th century wrote under conditions of strict censorship. The great thing about the art of writing a novel, is that you can write about anything. All you have to say is that it's fiction."
Read quote
3 likes
"For the traveler we see leaning on his neighbor is an honest and well-meaning man and full of melancholy, like those Chekhov characters so laden with virtues that they never know success in life."
Read quote
3 likes
"When something explosive is kept hidden away, a tension builds within that must ultimately be released."
Read quote
3 likes
"Great changes in the direction of peace have often come from people who were no great advocates of peace to begin with."
Read quote
3 likes
"I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well."
Read quote
3 likes
"[N]othing is as surprising as life. Except for writing. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the only consolation."
Read quote
3 likes
"I'm a relatively disciplined writer who composes the whole book before beginning to execute and write it. Of course, you can't hold - you cannot imagine a whole novel before you write it; there are limits to human memory and imagination. Lots of things come to your mind as you write a book, but again, I make a plan, chapter, know the plot."
Read quote
3 likes
"I don’t like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels … I keep my deep radical things for my novels."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"I do not believe in a personal connection to God; that's where it gets transcendental."
Read quote
3 likes
"It is not my intention to explain Turkey, its culture and its problems. My literature has a universal concern: I want to bring people and their emotions closer to my readers, not explain Turkish politics."
Read quote
3 likes
"Now everyone is prouder and poorer"
Read quote
3 likes
"Of course in Turkey I'm seen as being on the 'Western' side, criticised by the nationalists, criticised by the communitarians as not belonging. Even, sometimes, criticised for looking at my country through Western eyes. And in the Western media I'm portrayed as belonging to the East."
Read quote
3 likes
"I sometimes joke that I am the first writer of historical fiction who can look out his window and point to the objects in his novels. I have a view of the entrance to the Bosporus, the old city, Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque."
Read quote
3 likes
"I consider myself a person who comes from a Muslim culture. In any case, I would not say that I'm an atheist. So I'm a Muslim who associates historical and cultural identification with this religion."
Read quote
3 likes
"More than anything I am a novelist. But for me, an author's job is not only to create linguistically accomplished works. As an author I also want to stimulate discussion."
Read quote
3 likes