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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

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

More quotes by 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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Snow reminds Ka of God! But I’m not sure it would be accurate. What brings me close to God is the silence of snow.
Orhan Pamuk
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The bloody years of war and all the atrocities in European history have taught the Europeans that secular politics free of religious hatred is mainly a question of peace. This concept is not anchored in the same way in the consciousness of Turks, which has to do with the fact that the secular was forced upon us by the army.
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
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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
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I realized that the longing for art, like the longing for love, is a malady that blinds us, and makes us forget the things we already know, obscuring reality.
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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The urbanized life has lead to the destruction of the legends.
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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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
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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
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Nationalism stems from catastrophes, whether they are caused by earthquakes or lost wars.
Orhan Pamuk
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If we give what we treasure most to a Being we love with all our hearts, if we can do that without expecting anything in return, then the world becomes a beautiful place.
Orhan Pamuk
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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.
Orhan Pamuk
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It's a great relief for me that no one will ask me anymore: Orhan, when will you get the Nobel Prize?
Orhan Pamuk
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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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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
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Happiness is laughing together.
Orhan Pamuk
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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
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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