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The Bloody Years Of War And All The Atrocities In European History Have Taught The Europeans That Secular Politics Free Of Religious Hatred Is Mainly A Question Of Peace. This Concept Is Not Anchored In The Same Way In The Consciousness Of Turks, Which Has To Do With The Fact That The Secular Was Forced Upon Us By The Army.

-Orhan Pamuk

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The Bloody Years Of

Orhan Pamuk

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The Bloody Years Of War And All The Atrocities In European History Have Taught The Europeans That Secular Politics Free Of Religious Hatred Is Mainly A Question Of Peace. This Concept Is Not Anchored In The Same Way In The Consciousness Of Turks, Which Has To Do With The Fact That The Secular Was Forced Upon Us By The Army.

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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.

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The Sight Of Snow Made Her Think How Beautiful And Short Life Is And How, In Spite Of All Their Enmities, People Have So Very Much In Common; Measured Against Eternity And The Greatness Of Creation, The World In Which They Lived Was Narrow. That's Why Snow Drew People Together. It Was As If Snow Cast A Veil Over Hatreds, Greed, And Wrath And Made Everyone Feel Close To One Another. -- Snow Pg 119

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Painting Is The Silence Of Thought And The Music Of Sight.

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.

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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.

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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.

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Yet Does Illustrating In A New Way Signify A New Way Of Seeing?

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What Was The Difference Between Love And The Agony Of Waiting? Like Love, The Agony Of Waiting Began In The Muscles And 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.

After All, Isn't The Purpose Of The Novel, Or Of A Museum, For That Matter, To Relate Our Memories With Such Sincerity As To Transform Individual Happiness Into A Happiness All Can Share?

Individual Happiness

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.

Happiness Is Holding Someone In Your Arms And Knowing You Hold The Whole World.

...the Endless Repetition Of An Ordinary Miracle.

Life Is Beautiful If You Are On The Road To Somewhere

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.

The Gap Between Compassion And Surrender Is Love’s Darkest, Deepest Region.

Books, Which We Mistake For Consolation, Only Add Depth To Our Sorrow.

‎the Past Is Always An Invented Land.

My Diary Has Its Own Kind Of Magic. It Gives Me The Feeling Of Having Accomplished Something. On Days When I Don't Have Time For This, I Feel Tortured.

Istanbul Is A Vast Place. There Are Very Conservative Neighbourhoods, There Are Places That Are Upper Class, Westernised, Consuming Western Culture.

Western Culture

Ka Thought It Strangely Depressing That The Suicide Girls Had Had To Struggle To Find A Private Moment To Kill Themselves. Even After Swallowing Their Pills, Even As They Lay Quietly Dying, They’d Had To Share Their Rooms With Others.

There's A Lot Of Pride Involved In My Refusal To Believe In God.

Mankind's Greatest Error, The Biggest Deception Of The Past Thousand Years Is This: To Confuse Poverty With Stupidity.

I Have Hired A Bodyguard, On The Recommendation Of My Friends And The Government. It's Outrageous, Having To Live Like This.

Recommendations

The Writers Secret Is Not Inspiration - For It Is Never Clear Where It Comes From - It Is His Stubbornness, His Patience.

Colour Is The Touch Of The Eye, Music To The Deaf, A Word Out Of Darkness.

To Read A Novel Is To Wonder Constantly, Even At Moments When We Lose Ourselves Most Deeply In The Book: How Much Of This Is Fantasy, And How Much Is Real?

Nothing Changed In My Life Since I Work All The Time," Pamuk Said Then. "i've Spent 30 Years Writing Fiction. For The First 10 Years I Worried About Money And No One Asked Me How Much Money I Made. The Second Decade I Spent Money And No One Was Asking Me About That. And I've Spent The Last 10 Years With Everyone Expecting To Hear How I Spend The Money, Which I Will Not Do.

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.

There Are Two Kind Of Men,' Said Ka, In A Didatic Voice. 'the First Kind Does Not Fall In Love Until He's Seen How The Girls Eats A Sandwich, How She Combs Her Hair, What Sort Of Nonsense She Cares About, Why She's Angry At Her Father, And What Sort Of Stories People Tell About Her. The Second Type Of Man -- And I Am In This Category -- Can Fall In Love With A Woman Only If He Knows Next To Nothing About Her.

Falling In Love

...a Nation Could Change Its Way Of Life, Its History, Its Technology, Its Art, Literature, And Culture, But It Would Never Have A Real Chance To Change Its Gestures.

Now Everyone Is Prouder And Poorer

A Letter Doesn't Communicate By Words Alone. A Letter, Just Like A Book, Can Be Read By Smelling It, Touching It And Fondling It. Thereby, Intelligent Folk Will Say, 'go On Then, Read What The Letter Tells You!' Whereas The Dull-witted Will Say, 'go On Then, Read What He's Written!

I See Turkey's Future As Being In Europe, As One Of Many Prosperous, Tolerant, Democratic Countries.

I Believe Strongly In An Author's Moral Responsibility. But His First Obligation Is To Write Good Books.

I Work Seven Days A Week, From 9 In The Morning Till 8 At Night. I Have The Titles Of The Next Eight Novels I Want To Write. I Feel Myself Pitiable, Degraded On A Day That I Don't Write.

Heaven Was The Place Where You Kept Alive The Dreams Of Your Memories.

In Poetically Well Built Museums, Formed From The Heart's Compulsions, We Are Consoled Not By Finding In Them Old Objects That We Love, But By Losing All Sense Of Time.

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.

I Need A Moment Of Time For Myself Every Day, Like A Child Playing With His Things. When I Travel, I Routinely Find A Quiet Place, Open My Diary And Write Something In It.

Are You An Angel That Approaching You Should Be So Terrifying?

The First Thing I Learned At School Was That Some People Are Idiots; The Second Thing I Learned Was That Some Are Even Worse.

As Always After Drinking Too Much, I Felt Like My Own Ghost Trying To Take It's First Solo Walk Outside The Body.

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.

Morality Is Probably The Last Thing One Can Learn From Football.

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

Enjoyment Of Football Is Part Of The Social Context, And I Have Lost My Faith In This Social Context.

No One Drives Me Into Exile, Not Even The Nationalists.

We Live But For A Short Time, We See But Very Little, And We Know Almost Nothing; So, At Least, Let's Do Some Dreaming. Have Yourself A Very Good Sunday, My Dear Readers.

I Need The Pain Of Loneliness To Make My Imagination Work.

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.

I Want To Describe The Psychological State Of The People In A Certain City.

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.

My Unhappiness Protects Me From Life.

In Fact, My Entire Childhood Consisted Of Looking At Photographs In Which The Viewer Sees The Ball Behind The Line, Looking Through The Goal Net, And The Poor Goalkeeper In Front Of The Net.

I Was At The End Of My Tether When My First Book Was Published. For Eight Years I Didn't Make A Penny, I Worked So Hard, Didn't Drink, Didn't Enjoy Life.

Turks Have A Dismissive Phrase: He Works Like A Clerk. I Have Turned This Insult Around: I Am Proud To Say That I Work Like A Clerk.

The Real Choice We Have To Make Is Between Peace And Nationalism.

To Savour Istanbul's Back Streets, To Appreciate The Vines And Trees That Endow Its Ruins With Accidental Grace, You Must, First And Foremost, Be A Stranger To Them.

The Beauty And Mystery Of This World Only Emerges Through Affection, Attention, Interest And Compassion . . . Open Your Eyes Wide And Actually See This World By Attending To Its Colors, Details And Irony.

We Fall In Love More Deeply When Were Unhappy.

Falling In Love

Let Everyone Know, I Lived A Very Happy Life.

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.

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.

Great Changes In The Direction Of Peace Have Often Come From People Who Were No Great Advocates Of Peace To Begin With.

I Think A Lot About The Poems I Wasn't Able To Write...i Masturbrated...solitude Is Essentially A Matter Of Pride; You Bury Yourself In Your Own Scent. The Issue Is The Same For All Real Poets. If You've Been Happy For Too Long, You Become Banal. By The Same Token, If You've Been Unhappy For A Long Time, You Lose Your Poetic Power...happiness And Poverty Can Only Coexist For The Briefest Time. Afterword Either Happiness Coarsens The Poet Or The Poem Is So True It Destroys His Happiness.

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.

I Don't Read Newspapers In The Morning. I Take A Look At The Dailies In The Afternoon, But Only When I've Finished My Work For The Day. Reading About What Is Happening In Turkey Once Again Would Only Be Demoralizing For Me.

When Another Writer In Another House Is Not Free, No Writer Is Free.

Freedom Of Speech

My Hero Wants To Belong Too, But He Doesn't Want To Give Up All The Things He Came To Value In The West.

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?

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