The writers secret is not inspiration – for it is never clear where it comes from – it is his stubbornness, his patience.
Istanbul is a vast place. There are very conservative neighbourhoods, there are places that are upper class, Westernised, consuming Western culture.
I was at the end of my tether when my first book was published. For eight years I didn’t make a penny, I worked so hard, didn’t drink, didn’t enjoy life.
Writing my own diary is the best form of remembrance, but only for my own use. I need these notes; it’s like an impulse.
Ka knew very well that life was a meaningless string of random incidents.
The real question is how much suffering we’ve caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols – and using women as pawns in a political game.
It’s such a shame that we know so little about our own country, that we can’t find it in our hearts to love our own kind. Instead we admire those who show our country disrespect and betray its people.
I need a moment of time for myself every day, like a child playing with his things. When I travel, I routinely find a quiet place, open my diary and write something in it.
I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well.
For the traveler we see leaning on his neighbor is an honest and well-meaning man and full of melancholy, like those Chekhov characters so laden with virtues that they never know success in life.
My diary has its own kind of magic. It gives me the feeling of having accomplished something. On days when I don’t have time for this, I feel tortured.
Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors, as attentive people like yourselves might examine footprints to catch a thief.
Many great authors of the 19th century wrote under conditions of strict censorship. The great thing about the art of writing a novel, is that you can write about anything. All you have to say is that it’s fiction.
A writer in someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is.
The first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots; the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.
Let me first state forthright that contrary to what we’ve often read in books and heard from preachers, when you are a woman, you don’t feel like the Devil.
Painting taught literature to describe.
The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life.
Now everyone is prouder and poorer.
As always after drinking too much, I felt like my own ghost trying to take it’s first solo walk outside the body.