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Famous Orhan Pamuk Quotes

“When, after hours of lovemaking, we quickly dressed and left the apartment, I sometimes thought that Füsun was also taking care not to get “carried away” by her feelings for me. A proper understanding of my story depends, I think, on a full appreciation of the pleasure we took from these sweet shared moments. I am certain that the fire at the heart of my tale is the desire to relive those moments of love, and my attachment to those pleasures.”

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Author:Orhan Pamuk
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“Our wealthy, Westernized classes are so obsessed with individualism, they’ve forgotten how to be themselves, let alone how to be individuals,” he said. “These Westernized Turks are too conceited to believe in God. Their individuality is all they care about. Most choose not to believe in God just to prove they’re not like everyone else, though they won’t even acknowledge that’s the reason why. But faith is precisely about being like everyone else. Religion is the haven and the consolation of the meek.”

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Book:Kırmızı Saçlı Kadın
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“I hear the question upon your lips: What is it to be a colour? Colour is the touch of the eye, music to the deaf, a word out of the darkness. Because I’ve listened to souls whispering – like the susurrus of the wind – from book to book and object to object for tens or thousands of years, allow me to say that my touch resembles the touch of angels. Part of me, the serious half, calls out to your vision while the mirthful half sours through the air with your glances. I’m so fortunate to be red! I’m fiery. I’m strong. I know men take notice of me and that I cannot be resisted. I do not conceal myself: For me, delicacy manifests itself neither in weakness nor in subtlety, but through determination and will. So, I draw attention to myself. I’m not afraid of other colours, shadows, crowds or even of loneliness. How wonderful it is to cover a surface that awaits me with my own victorious being! Wherever I’m spread, I see eyes shine, passions increase, eyebrows rise and heartbeats quicken. Behold how wonderful it is to live! Behold how wonderful to see. I am everywhere. Life begins with and returns to me. Have faith in what I tell you.”

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Book:My Name Is Red
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“Das echte Liebesleid nistet sich an der Basis unserer Existenz ein, erwischt uns unerbittlich an unserem schwächsten Punkt, greift von da auf alles andere über und verteilt sich unaufhaltsam über unseren ganzen Körper und unser ganzes Leben. Wenn wir unglücklich verliebt sind, dienen unsere sämtlichen Leiden und Sorgen, vom Tod des Vaters bis hin zum banalsten Missgeschick, wie zum Beispiel einem verlegten Schlüssel, als neuerlicher Auslöser für den Urschmerz, der stets bereit ist, wieder anzuschwellen. Wessen Leben durch die Liebe auf den Kopf gestellt wird, so wie meines, der meint immer, zusammen mit dem Liebesleid würden auch alle anderen Sorgen ein Ende finden, und so rührt er unwillkürlich immer wieder an der Wunde in sich drinnen.”

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Book:Masumiyet Müzesi
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“A good actor,' said Sunay in a light theatrical tone, 'is a man who represents the sediment, the unexplored and unexplained powers that have drifted down the centuries. He takes the lessons he has gleaned and hides them deep inside himself. His self-mastery is awesome; never does he bare his heart; no one may know how powerful he is until he enters on to the stage. All his life, he travels down unfamiliar roads, to perform at the most out-of-the-way theatres in the most godforsaken town, and everywhere he goes, he searches for a voice that will grant him genuine freedom. If he is so fortunate as to find that voice, he must embrace it fearlessly and follow it to the end.”

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Book:Snow
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“Aşk nedir?” “Neymiş?” “Aşk, Füsun'un karayolları, kaldırımlar, evler, bahçeler ve odalarda gezinirken ve çay bahçelerinde, lokantalarda ve akşam yemeği sofrasında otururken, ona bakan Kemal'in duyduğu bağlılık duygusuna verilen addır.” “Hmmm… güzel cevap” derdi Füsun. “Beni görmediğin zaman aşk olmuyor mu?” “O zaman fena bir takıntı, bir hastalık oluyor.”

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Book:The Museum of Innocence
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“İşte gene senin o "ya hep ya hiç" anlayışın. Sana biraz geniş ve esnek olmayı öğretemeyeceğim. Sana göre hayatta iki türlü anlayış vardır. Ya bir şeye karşı çıkarsın, ya da benimsersin. Arası yok! Ağbin de öyle! O karşı çıkıyor. Anladığım kadarıyla, karşı çıkmayı o kadar ileri götürmüş ki, en sonunda yaşamaya bile karşı çıkar olmuş.”

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Book:Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları
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“It happens all the time to you fortunate literate people: A maiden who can't read begs you to read a love letter she's received. The letter is so surprising, exciting and disturbing that its owner, though embarrassed at your becoming privy to her most intimate affairs, ashamed and distraught, asks you all the same to read it once more. You read it again, In the end, you've read the letter so many times that both of you have memorized it. Before long, she'll take the letter in her hands and ask, "Did he make that state- ment there?" and "Did he say that here?" As you point to the appropriate places, she'll pore over those passages, still unable to make sense of the words there. As she stares at the curvy letters of the words, sometimes I am so moved I forget that I myself can't read or write and feel the urge to embrace those illiterate maidens whose tears fall to the page.”

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Book:My Name Is Red
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“It happens all the time to you fortunate literate people: A maiden who can't read begs you to read a love letter she's received. The letter is so surprising, exciting and disturbing that its owner, though embarrassed at your becoming privy to her most intimate affairs, ashamed and distraught, asks you all the same to read it once more. You read it again, In the end, you've read the letter so many times that both of you have memorized it. Before long, she'll take the letter in her hands and ask, "Did he make that statement there?" and "Did he say that here?" As you point to the appropriate places, she'll pore over those passages, still unable to make sense of the words there. As she stares at the curvy letters of the words, sometimes I am so moved I forget that I myself can't read or write and feel the urge to embrace those illiterate maidens whose tears fall to the page.”

TearsLove Letter
Book:My Name Is Red
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“Still, the melancholy of this dying culture was all around us. Great as the desire to westernize and modernize may have been, the more desperate wish was probably to be rid of all the bitter memories of the fallen empire, rather as a spurned lover throws away his lost beloved's clothes, possessions, and photographs. But as nothing, western or local, came to fill the void, the great drive to westernize amounted mostly to the erasure of the past; the effect on culture was reductive and stunting, leading families like mine, otherwise glad of republican progress, to furnish their houses like museums.”

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Book:Istanbul: Memories and the City
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“I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don’t shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up and down the city’s greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas’ mansions, all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances, their facades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries on winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unϩinching under the pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearold mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men ϧshing from the sides of the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering aϱairs with gilded ceilings, now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuşes, ϧfties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any western city but serve here as shared taxis, huϫng and puϫng up the city’s narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an evening on the boats crossing from Kadıköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken; of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting “the oϫcials”; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE”

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Book:Istanbul: Memories and the City
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“By then I’d already learned that thoughts sometimes come to us in words, and sometimes in images. There were some thoughts - such as a memory of running under the pouring rain, and how it felt - that I couldn’t even begin to put into words … Yet their image was clear in my mind. And there were other things that I could describe in words but were otherwise impossible to visualize: black light, my mother’s death, infinity.”

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Book:Kırmızı Saçlı Kadın
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“Life was an endless string of miseries; if one came to an end there was another waiting around the corner, and if that misfortune became easier to bear, the next would strike harder, leaving creases on our faces that made us look alike. Even if misfortune came suddenly, we knew it had been there all along, lying in wait on the road in front of us, so we were always ready for it; when the new cloud of trouble descended on us we felt alone, hopelessly alone, inescapably alone, but still we dreamed of the happiness we might find if only we could find other people willing to share our misery.”

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Book:The Black Book
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“In fact no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it. It may well be that, in a moment of joy, one might sincerely believe that they are living that golden instant "now," even having lived such a moment before, but whatever they say, in one part of their hearts they still believe in the certainty of a happier moment to come. Because how could anyone, and particularly anyone who is still young, carry on with the belief that everything could only get worse: If a person is happy enough to think he has reached the happiest moment of his life, he will be hopeful enough to believe his future will be just as beautiful, more so.”

LifeHappinessJoyHopeBeautyOptimism
Book:The Museum of Innocence
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