xy

“Painting taught literature to describe.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

“I realized that the longing for art, like the longing for love, is a malady that blinds us, and makes us forget the things we already know, obscuring reality.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

“I need the pain of loneliness to make my imagination work.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

“does not just paralyze the inhabitants of Instanbul, it also gives them poetic license to be paralyzed.”

Orhan Pamuk book Istanbul: Memories and the City

“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.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

“Colour is the touch of the eye,
Music to the deaf,
A word out of darkness.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

“Ka knew very well that life was a meaningless string of random incidents”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

“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.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

“… every person has a star, every star has a friend, and for every person carrying a star there is someone else who reflects it, and everyone carries this reflection like a secret confidante in the heart.”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

“The real question is how much suffering we've caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols - and using women as pawns in a political game.”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

“I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

“The gap between compassion and surrender is love’s darkest, deepest region.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

“If we give what we treasure most to a Being we love with all our hearts, if we can do that without expecting anything in return, then the world becomes a beautiful place.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

“Life is beautiful if you are on the road to somewhere”

Orhan Pamuk book The New Life

“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.”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

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

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

“Suddenly Ka realized he was in love with İpek. And realizing that this love would determine the rest of his life, he was filled with dread.”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

“We're not stupid! We're just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

“She looked out the window; in her eyes was the light that you see only in children arriving at a new place, or in young people still open to new influences, still curious about the world because they have not yet been scarred by life.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence