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The secularists in Turkey haven't underestimated religion, they just made the mistake of believing they could control it with the power of the army alone.

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
Mistake
Underestimated
Alone
Turkeys
Religion
Turkey
Power
Believing
Made
Army
Believe
Havens
Haven
Control
Secularists

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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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I really don't want to portray the Islamists as simply evil, the way it's often done in the west.
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When another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free.
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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.
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Enjoyment of football is part of the social context, and I have lost my faith in this social context.
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I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well.
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Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.
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The real choice we have to make is between peace and nationalism.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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
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I certainly see myself more as a craftsman than as an artist.
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I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.
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What was venerated as style was nothing more than an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.
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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 first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.
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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.
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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.
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