The greatest happiness is when the eye discovers beauty where neither then mind conceived of nor the hand intended any.

I do know this much though: If a man resorts to wiles, guile and petty deceptions, it means he’s nowhere near being in love.

Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.

A museum should not just be a place for fancy paintings but should be a place where we can communicate our lives through our everyday objects.

I have always thought that the place where you sleep or the place you share with your partner should be separate from the place where you write. The domestic rituals and details somehow kill the...

This is the greatest consolation in life. 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...

We don’t need more museums that try to construct the historical narratives of a society, community, team, nation, state, tribe, company, or species. We all know that the ordinary, everyday stories of individuals are riches,...

…and awakening, at that moment, to the thrilling prospect of complete surrender, not just of one’s lips but of one’s entire body to a lover’s mercy, we recognized that the gap between compassion and surrender...

Oscar Wilde always makes me smile – with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of...

The fictive structure, my work, my imagination, my books are about the details, the huge construction about culture, Islamic culture or modern Turkey. They’re all intertwined.

Modernity means overabundance. We are living in the age of mass-produced objects, things that come without announcing themselves and end up on our tables, on our walls. We use them – most of us don’t...

The drinking of coffee is an absolute sin! Our Glorious Prophet did not partake of coffee because he knew it dulled the intellect, caused ulcers, hernia and sterility; he understood that coffee was nothing but...

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.