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...

Contrary to what the West seems to think, it is not poverty that brings people like us so close to God. It’s the fact that no one is more curious than we are to learn...

I believe in a world where there are no heroes, and I’ve read and know humanity a lot. There are moments that I admire in a person courage, intellect, hard work. These are the qualities...

I write a world where everyone is partly right.

Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.

It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it. Had I known, had I cherished this gift, would everything have turned out differently?

…at the end of the day there was nothing to be gained by reminding people that everything that had ever been written, even the greatest and most authoritative texts in the world, were about dreams,...

The essential reason for my loneliness is that I don’t even know where I belong.

I don’t like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels… I keep my deep, radical things for my novels.

I have the legacy of my father and his nocturnal automatic waking up. But I like those periods. I immediately have a different vision of humanity and my life.

As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them

Where there is a true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.

…love is deep attention, deep compassion…

Good fiction is about asserting the beauties of the world, inventing a new, positive thing. Where am I going to get that? And it should be original; it should not be cliched. So the way...

When the whole world reads your books, is there any other happiness for a writer? I am happy that my books are read in 57 languages. But I am focused on Istanbul not because of...

Museums are western inventions where the rich and the powerful or the government and the state tend to exhibit the signs and symbol and images of their culture.

¡Ninguna vida se parece a otra!… Cada historia es una historia precisamente porque no existe otra igual.

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...

Women kill themselves because they hope to gain something,” said Kadife. “Men kill themselves because they’ve lost hope of gaining anything.

I would be pleased if someone would invent a pill to remove my impatience, moodiness, and occasional bursts of anger. But if they did, I wouldn’t be able to write my novels or paint.

Language is me, in a way. Really, I feel it.

To know is to remember that you’ve seen.To see is to know without remembering. Thus painting is remembering the blackness.

There’s a lot of pride involved in my refusal to believe in god.

She looked out the window; in her eyes was the light that you see only in children arriving at a new place, or in young people still open to new influences, still curious about the...

These were innocent people, so innocent that they thought poverty a crime that wealth would allow them to forget. — from the notebooks of Celal Salik

The fueling of anti-Turkish sentiment in Europe is resulting in an anti-European, indiscriminate nationalism in Turkey.

I sometimes feel nervous because I give stupid answers to certain pointless questions. It happens in Turkish as much as in English. I speak bad Turkish and utter stupid sentences.

Remembering the past always comes with an image or a view attached.

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.

Suddenly Ka realized he was in love with İpek. And realizing that this love would determine the rest of his life, he was filled with dread.

I came across humanity in Istanbul, and all I know about life comes from Istanbul, and definitely, I am writing about Istanbul. I also love the city because I live there, it has formed me,...

The hero of the book does long to experience God. But his conception of God is very western.

My home is attached to a study – in fact, my home is my study, and I have a little room to sleep in. I need to write looking onto the street or a landscape....

Es algo sabido que la vida no está predeterminada y que todas las historias son una cadena de casualidades. Pero incluso los que son conscientes de esa realidad, cuando llega cierto momento de su existencia...

Only vulgar people boast about how happy they are

My mood, as I identify with each of my heroes, resembles what I used to feel when I played alone as a child. Like all children, I liked to play make-believe, to put myself in...

I write because I have an innate need to. I write because I can’t do normal work. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am...

Nothing can be as astounding as life. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the sole consolation.

In actuality, we don’t look for smiles in pictures of bliss, but rather, for the happiness in life itself. Painters know this, but this is preciously what they cannot depict. That’s why they substitute the...

A man could be at the coffee-house every evening laughing and playing cards with his friends, he could have so much fun with his classmates that there is never a moment they arent´t exploding into...

In a brutal country like ours, where human life is ‘cheap’, it’s stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.

I asked him about his enemies. He began to count them. The list went on and on….” – Conversations with Yahya Kemal

When I paint, I definitely live in the present, like someone in a shower whistling or singing.

I strongly believe that the art of the novel works best when the writer identifies with whoever he or she is writing about. Novels in the end are based on the human capacity, compassion, and...

To be left with only the trace of a memory is to gaze at an armchair that’s still molded to the form of a love who has left never to return: It is to grieve,...

Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I...

Believing that Sibel was saying these things to me to make me angry, I got angry. But this is not to say that the fury owed nothing to my partial awareness that she was right.

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.

There’s been quite a clear upswing in nationalist sentiments. Everyone is talking about it, in Turkey as well.

One side of me is very busy paying attention to the details of life, the humanity of people, catching the street voices, the middle-class, upper-middle-class secret lives of Turks. The other side is interested in...