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

Orhan Pamuk

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Orhan Pamuk
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: June 7
Academic
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
İstanbul
Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk
Right
Insist
Distinction
Stupid
Poor

More quotes by Orhan Pamuk

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Well, on the one hand the Turks have the legitimate need to defend their national dignity - and this includes being recognized as a part of the west and Europe.
Orhan Pamuk
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The writers secret is not inspiration - for it is never clear where it comes from - it is his stubbornness, his patience.
Orhan Pamuk
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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.
Orhan Pamuk
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Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.
Orhan Pamuk
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The urbanized life has lead to the destruction of the legends.
Orhan Pamuk
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The image that I remember most of all is of the Fenerbahçe players storming into the stadium before kickoff. They were called the canaries because of their yellow jerseys. It was as if they, like canaries, were fluttering into the stadium out of a hole. I loved it. It was poetry.
Orhan Pamuk
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Happiness is laughing together.
Orhan Pamuk
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Nationalism stems from catastrophes, whether they are caused by earthquakes or lost wars.
Orhan Pamuk
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Now everyone is prouder and poorer
Orhan Pamuk
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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.
Orhan Pamuk
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Colour is the touch of the eye, Music to the deaf, A word out of darkness.
Orhan Pamuk
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What is the thing you want most from me? What can I do to make you love me?' Be yourself,' said Ipek.
Orhan Pamuk
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...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.
Orhan Pamuk
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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
Orhan Pamuk
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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.
Orhan Pamuk
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Great changes in the direction of peace have often come from people who were no great advocates of peace to begin with.
Orhan Pamuk
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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?
Orhan Pamuk
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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.
Orhan Pamuk
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The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver.
Orhan Pamuk
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It was in Cihangir that i first learned Istanbul was not an anonymous multitude of walled-in lives - a jungle of apartments where no one knew who was dead or who was celebrating what - but an archipelago of neighbourhoods in which everyone knew each other.
Orhan Pamuk