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...

Fue a lo largo de aquellos cuatro años cuando aprendí que la vida no es una espera sino algo que se puede disfrutar.

Dacă în tine dăinuie chipul unei iubite, pictat în inimă, îți este casă întreaga lume.

We’re not stupid! We’re just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction

The habit of collecting, of attachment to things, is an essential human trait. But Western civilization put collecting on a pedestal by inventing museums. Museums are about representing power. It could be the king’s power...

When I was publishing my first books, the previous generation of authors was fading away, so I was welcomed because I was a new author.

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...

So you heroically undertook to endure the pains of faithlessness, just to be able to write good poems. But you didn´t realise then that when you lost that voice inside you, you´d end up all...

Tužna projekcija života za pjesnika je primamljivija od samog života.

Yet does illustrating in a new way signify a new way of seeing?

I had the feeling that focusing on objects and telling a story through them would make my protagonists different from those in Western novels – more real, more quintessentially of Istanbul.

I wanted to tell a romantic and dark side of Ottoman history that was also slightly political, saying to the previous generation of writers, ‘Look, I’m interested in Ottoman things, and I’m not afraid of...

They, like me, like all of us, had, once upon a time, in a past so far away it seemed like heaven, caught by chance a glimpse of an inner essence, only to forget what...

Benim için kitap okurken hala önemli olan anlamaktan çok, okuduğum şeye uygun düşler kurmaktır.

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...

At first my publisher had reservations about publishing it in the form you are familiar with.

At the age of 60, I am less experimental and more mature. I want most of all to convey my understanding of life.

Self-hatred is OK. I have self-hatred, too. It’s OK. What’s bad is if you don’t know how to get out of it, don’t know how to manage it. Self-hatred is, in fact, a good thing...

Sabía que si regresaba a Venecia no podría retomar una vida que había dejado a medias en el mismo punto en que se había interrumpido. Como mucho, podría iniciar una vida distinta.

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...

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...

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...

…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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.