Quote

Writing my own diary is the best form of remembrance, but only for my own use. I need these notes it's like an impulse.

Orhan Pamuk

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Orhan Pamuk
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: June 7
Academic
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
İstanbul
Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk
Like
Impulse
Notes
Use
Form
Best
Need
Diary
Needs
Diaries
Writing
Remembrance

More quotes by Orhan Pamuk

Image
If Turkey become a member of the EU, of course Turks would lose a part of this identity, just as Europe would lose a part of its own. It would also be a different Europe then. Accepting Turkey into the EU is an ambitious political endeavor of historical proportions. Europe would become a strong, multi-religious unit.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
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
Image
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?
Orhan Pamuk
Image
Ka knew very well that life was a meaningless string of random incidents
Orhan Pamuk
Image
The real choice we have to make is between peace and nationalism.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
We're not stupid! We're just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction
Orhan Pamuk
Image
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.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
...the endless repetition of an ordinary miracle.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
Happiness is laughing together.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
It may not happen in the first instant, but within ten minutes of meeting a man, a woman has a clear idea of who he is, or at least who he might be for her, and her heart of hearts has already told her whether or not she's going to fall in love with him.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
It's a great relief for me that no one will ask me anymore: Orhan, when will you get the Nobel Prize?
Orhan Pamuk
Image
East and West are coming together. Whether in peace or anarchy - they are coming together. There needn't be a clash between East and West, between Islam and Europe.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
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.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
Hüzün does not just paralyze the inhabitants of Instanbul, it also gives them poetic license to be paralyzed.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
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
Image
I am proud to be a Turk, and to write in Turkish about Turkey - and to have been translated into about 40 languages. But I don't want to politicize things by dramatizing them.
Orhan Pamuk