I think it’s horrible that we Turks are always seen under the aspect of Islam first. I am constantly asked about religion, and almost always with a negative undercurrent that makes me furious.
The snow reminded me of the beauty and mystery of creation, of the essential joy that is life.
National consciousness is truly a miraculous thing. When I am not in Turkey I feel even more Turkish than in Istanbul. But when I’m home my European side becomes more apparent.
I think perhaps it is a generational thing. I talk to younger people and they say, Where is this melancholy city you talk about My Istanbul is a sunny place.
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?
Mankind’s greatest error, the biggest deception of the past thousand years is this: to confuse poverty with stupidity.
I certainly see myself more as a craftsman than as an artist.
To savour Istanbul’s back streets, to appreciate the vines and trees that endow its ruins with accidental grace, you must, first and foremost, be a stranger to them.
Snow reminds Ka of God! But I’m not sure it would be accurate. What brings me close to God is the silence of snow.
The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver.
True literature is more than just a story someone has told. It must provide the reader with the essence of the world on a moral, philosophical and emotional level.
Turks have a dismissive phrase: he works like a clerk. I have turned this insult around: I am proud to say that I work like a clerk.
Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world.
Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.
Yet does illustrating in a new way signify a new way of seeing?
I want to describe the psychological state of the people in a certain city.
Without patience and the skill of a craftsman, even the greatest talent is wasted.
When another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free.
All great masters, in their work, seek that profound void within color and outside time.
As soon as I observed myself from outside myself, I recognized and understood that I had a long-standing habit of keeping an eye on myself. That’s how I managed to pull myself together, over the years, checking myself from the outside.