Orhan Pamuk Quotes

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

“Heaven was the place where you kept alive the dreams of your memories.”

“How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known?”

“Happiness means being close to the one you love, that's all. (Taking immediate possession is not necessary.)”

“Let everyone know, I lived a very happy life.”

“What is the thing you want most from me? What can I do to make you love me?'

Be yourself,' said Ipek.”

“Immersing oneself in the problems of a book is a good way to keep from thinking of love.”

“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.”

“When we lose people we love, we should never disturb their souls, whether living or dead. Instead. we should find consolation in an object that reminds you of them, something… I don't know… even an earring”

“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.”

“Life can't be all that bad,' i'd think from time to time. 'Whatever happens, i can always take a long walk along the Bosphorus.”

“[N]othing is as surprising as life. Except for writing. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the only consolation.”

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

“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.”

“Whatever anybody says, the most important thing in life is to be happy.”

“… love is deep attention, deep compassion…”

“The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.”

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

“Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.”

“The first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots; the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.”

“Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.”

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

“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.”

“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?”

“People only tell lies when there is something they are terribly frightened of losing.”

“As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different 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.”

“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.”

“For if a lover's face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home.”

“Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors, as attentive people like yourselves might examine footprints to catch a thief.”

“Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. I never thought of it before: I'd been living luminously between two eternities of darkness.”

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

“As always after drinking too much, I felt like my own ghost trying to take it's first solo walk outside the body.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“… 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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“Painting taught literature to describe.”

“… the endless repetition of an ordinary miracle.”

“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.”