QUOTES by Orhan Pamuk
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my entire life, I am most surprised by those moments when I have felt as if the sentences, dreams, and pages that have made me so ecstatically happy have not come from my own imagination - that another power has found them and generously presented them to me.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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 - this craft - he must first have been given some hope.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
The writer's secret is not inspiration - for it is never clear where it comes from - it is his stubbornness, his patience.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
People only tell lies when there is something they are terribly frightened of losing.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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. Looking at reality from some distance gives me romantic visions.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
I don't look at emails, Internet or newspapers before 1 P.M. I wake at 7 A.M., eat fruit, drink tea or coffee, and read what I've achieved, or not achieved, the previous day. Then I take a shower and work on my next sentence until 1 P.M. After I've done emails and so on, I write again from 3 P.M. until 8 P.M.; then I socialise.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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, and it's me. Of course it is natural. If somebody lived all his life in Delhi, he will write about Delhi.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
The first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots; the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
I get used to my fountain pens and my clothes, and I can never throw them away. I replace them only when I see that they are broken or embarrassing to wear.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
Let us say in the pocket of one of my old coats I find a movie ticket from many years ago. Once I see the ticket, not only do I remember that I saw this movie, but also scenes from this movie, which I think I have entirely forgotten, come back to me. Objects have this power, and I like it.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
Nothing can be as astounding as life. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the sole consolation.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
We should not judge Islam by terrorists. All civilizations and cultures produce terrorists. Every time there is a flag-burning, killing, or provocative films, I'm worried, not because something radical will happen, and this time, some people are killed. We're very sorry for that.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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 I can show more compassion to my characters if I write in a first person singular.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
Idealism, unrealistic idealism, is always contrasted with the reality of the people, of the man in the street. The details of daily life are always more convincing than the political fantasies of the earlier generations.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
I don't like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels... I keep my deep, radical things for my novels.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
When people read a novel 600 pages long, six months pass, and all they will remember are five pages. They don't remember the text - instead, they remember the sensations the text gives them.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
'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.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
For me, Westernization is not about consuming fanciful goods; it's about a system of free speech, democracy, egalitarianism and respect for the people's rights and dignity.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
At the age of 60, I am less experimental and more mature. I want most of all to convey my understanding of life.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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 or, later, people's power.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
People look at me as sort of a diplomat for Turkey, which by nature, I'm not; I don't want to be. It's again about that playfulness. Being Turkey's voice or representative is not playful, it's not childlike; it makes me self-conscious, kills the child in me.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
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 if you can clearly see the mechanism of it, because it helps you to understand others.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
To appropriate an invention, be it artistic or technical, you have to have at least a part of your spirit embracing it so radically that you somehow change.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk
Just as good books give me the joys of being alive, bad novels depress me, and as I notice this sentiment coming from the pages, I stop. I also do not hesitate to walk out of a movie house if the film is bad.
Quote by -Orhan Pamuk