Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world.

Ka found it very soothing: for the first time in years, he felt part of a family. In spite of the trials and responsibilities of what was called ‘family’, he saw now the joys of its unyielding togetherness, and was sorry not to have known more of it in his life.

It’s not the content, but the form of thought that counts.

Novels are political because in them, we try to identify with people who are not like us. And, in that sense, I like the first-person singular because I have to imitate accurately the voice of someone who is not like me. The third-person singular gives me an authority over a character.

Well, on the one hand the Turks have the legitimate need to defend their national dignity – and this includes being recognized as a part of the west and Europe.

Now everyone is prouder and poorer

Most of the time it’s not the Europeans who belittle us. What happens when we look at them is that we belittle ourselves. When we undertake the pilgrimage, it’s not just to escape the tyranny at home but also to reach to the depths of our souls. The day arrives when the guilty must return...

…it seemed to me that the entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising out memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the...

There are two kinds of Communists: the arrogant ones, who enter the fray hoping to make men out of the people and bring progress to the nation; and the innocent ones, who get involved because they believe in equality and justice. The arrogant ones are obsessed with power; they presume to think for everyone; only...

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.

I wrote ‘My Name is Red’ just to remember painting, where the hand does it before the intellect. When I’m captive to it, I’m a happier person. Kierkegaard tells us that a happy person is someone who lives in the present; the unhappy person, someone who lives either in the past or the future.

I need the pain of loneliness to make my imagination work.

To read a novel is to wonder constantly, even at moments when we lose ourselves most deeply in the book: How much of this is fantasy, and how much is real?

As I was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, it occurred to me that if all else failed, a man could at least kiss himself, and I stared in to the mirror, conjuring up the memory of the couple in the film. I couldn’t get the image of their lips out of my mind....

Istanbul is a vast place. There are very conservative neighbourhoods, there are places that are upper class, Westernised, consuming Western culture.

Being a fiction writer makes you someone who works with irresponsibility.

‘The Museum of Innocence’ is not about politics; it’s a love story, but I think it’s political in the sense that it wants to capture how a man suppresses a woman.

Y lo peor era que mi cara se había transformado en otra completamente distinta, en la comisura de mis labios se abría paso una cierta desvergüenza de tanto beber y besar en las fiestas, mis ojos parecían lánguidos de permanecer despierto sin tener en cuenta la hora o de caer inconsciente por la bebida, en...

Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love?

At the heart of the novelist’s craft lies an optimism which thinks that the knowledge we gather from our everyday experience, if given proper form, can become valuable knowledge about reality.

,Es el amor el que vuelve estúpidas a las personas o es que sólo los estúpidos se enamoran?

I see Turkey’s future as being in Europe, as one of many prosperous, tolerant, democratic countries.

Authoritarianism, an unrealistic occidental imagination – these issues will never be settled. Turkey will continue to take Europe as a model; it will continue to pursue its search for democracy.

Durante toda minha vida me senti perdido e só como um animal ferido. Talvez se eu não tivesse abraçado com tal violência, não a teria irritado tanto, e talvez não tivesse destruído um trabalho de doze anos, terminando exatamente onde comecei. Mas cá estou eu, abandonado e definhando; trago comigo as cicatrizes de um sofrimento...

My fear was not the fear of God but, as in the case of the whole Turkish secular bourgeoisie, fear of the anger of those who believe in God too zealously(…) I experienced the guilt complex as something personal, originated less from the fear of distancing myself from God than from distancing myself from the...

The power of things inheres in the memories they gather up inside them, and also in the vicissitudes of our imagination, and our memory–of this there is no doubt.

The knowledge that she could learn to love a man had always meant more to her than loving him effortlessly, more even than falling in love, and that was why she now felt that she was on the threshold of a new life, a happiness bound to endure for a very long time.

I don’t much care whether rural Anatolians or Istanbul secularists take power. I’m not close to any of them. What I care about is respect for the individual.

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,...

Havadan sudan söz ettikten ve gerekli bilgi formlarını titizlikle doldurduktan sonra, “sorunumu” sorunca, doktora, bir an, sevgilimi kaybettiğim için kendimi uzaya yollanmış bir köpek gibi yalnız hissettiğimi söylemek geldi içimden…

Immersing oneself in the problems of a book is a good way to keep from thinking of love.

My prolonged study of these photographs led me to appreciate the importance of perserving certain moments for prosperity , and as time moved forwards I also came to see what a powerful influence these framed scenes exerted over us as we went about our daily lives.To watch my uncle pose my brother a maths problem...

The opponents of this process have always tried to vilify westernization as a poor imitation.

Generally, I get bad reviews in Turkey.

These political movements flourish on the margins of Turkish society because of poverty and because of the people’s feeling that they are not being represented.

…when a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also are inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins; it was…this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art.

After all, a woman who doesn’t love cats is never going to be make a man happy.

I saw myself in the mirror, and from my expression I had a shocking intimation of the rift between my body and my soul. Whereas my face was drained by defeat and shock, inside my head was another universe: I now understood as an elemental fact of life that while I was here, inside my...

Maybe you’ve understood by now that for men like myself, that is, melancholy men for whom love, agony, happiness and misery are just excuses for maintaining eternal loneliness, life offers neither great joy nor great sadness.

My hero wants to belong too, but he doesn’t want to give up all the things he came to value in the west.

First, I would find an object which I would think is suitable for my characters and stories, then write about it, and in the end, I ended up with a house full of thousands of objects.

…the endless repetition of an ordinary miracle.

Those who can truly see, know.

Life is beautiful if you are on the road to somewhere

When two people love each other as we do, no one can come between them, no one,” I said, amazed at the words I was uttering without preparation. “Lovers like us, because they know that nothing can destroy their love, even on the worst days, even when they are heedlessly hurting each other in the...

I think novelists should be disciplined and self-imposed working hours. I work a lot, but I don’t feel that I’m working. I always feel that there is a child in me, healthy, and I’m playing.

If a writer is to tell his own story – tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people – if he is to feel the power of the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table and patiently give himself over to this art...

In the cities of the European Franks, women roam about exposing not only their faces, but also their brightly shining hair (after their necks, their most attractive feature), their arms, their beautiful throats, and even, if what Ive heard is true, a portion of their gorgeous legs; as a result, the men of those cities...

The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.

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.