Quote

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

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
Language
Politicize
Write
Turk
Writing
Turkish
Things
Translated
Turkeys
Turkey
Languages
Proud

More quotes by 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
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.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
...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
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
I don't read newspapers in the morning. I take a look at the dailies in the afternoon, but only when I've finished my work for the day. Reading about what is happening in Turkey once again would only be demoralizing for me.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
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
Image
I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
I'm a relatively disciplined writer who composes the whole book before beginning to execute and write it. Of course, you can't hold - you cannot imagine a whole novel before you write it there are limits to human memory and imagination. Lots of things come to your mind as you write a book, but again, I make a plan, chapter, know the plot.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
My childhood proved to me that there could be no enjoyment of football without community. But it becomes difficult when this community is having problems with its identity. That's when we experience all possible forms of nationalist exaggeration.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
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
Image
I need the pain of loneliness to make my imagination work.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
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
Image
When Turkey began approaching the EU, I wasn't the only one who worried that the dark stain in Turkey's history - or rather the history of the Ottoman Empire - could become a problem one day. In other words, what happened to the Armenians in World War I. That's why I couldn't leave the issue untouched.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
The past is always an invented land.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
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
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 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.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
Age had not made him less handsome, as is so often the case it had simply made him less visible.
Orhan Pamuk
Image
Life is beautiful if you are on the road to somewhere
Orhan Pamuk