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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.

Orhan Pamuk

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Orhan Pamuk
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: June 7
Academic
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Essayist
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İstanbul
Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk
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Muslim

More quotes by 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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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
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Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.
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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The first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.
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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I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well.
Orhan Pamuk
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Sometimes I would see them not as mementos of the blissful hours but as the tangible precious debris of the storm raging in my soul.
Orhan Pamuk
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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.
Orhan Pamuk
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After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy.
Orhan Pamuk
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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.
Orhan Pamuk
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The challenge is to lend conviction even to the voices which advocate views I find personally abhorrent, whether they are political Islamists or officers justifying a coup.
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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Many great authors of the 19th century wrote under conditions of strict censorship. The great thing about the art of writing a novel, is that you can write about anything. All you have to say is that it's fiction.
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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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.
Orhan Pamuk
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In his brilliant new book Pankaj Mishra reverses the long gaze of the West upon the East, showing modern history as it has been felt by the majority of the world's population from Turkey to China. These are the amazing stories of the grandfathers of today's angry Asians. Excellent!
Orhan Pamuk
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Time had not faded my memories (as I had prayed to God it might), nor had it healed my wounds as it is said always to do. I began each day with the hope that the next day would be better, my recollections a little less pointed, but I would awake to the same pain, as if a black lamp were burning eternally inside me, radiating darkness.
Orhan Pamuk
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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.
Orhan Pamuk
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More than anything I am a novelist. But for me, an author's job is not only to create linguistically accomplished works. As an author I also want to stimulate discussion.
Orhan Pamuk