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.
Now he knew what it was that he wanted to tell Istanbul and write on its walls. It was both his public and his private view; it was what his heart intended as much as what his words had always meant to say. He said it to himself: “I have loved Rayiha more than anything in this world.
A city’s intellect ought to be measured not by its scholars, libraries, miniaturists, calligraphers and schools, but by the number of crimes insidiously committed on its dark streets over thousands of years.
To travel along the Bosphorus, be it in a ferry, a motor launch, or a rowboat, is to see the city house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood, and also from afar as a silhouette, an ever-mutating mirage.
Nightclub wars were the worst kind of trouble: back in the day, when rival establishments and their gangs declared war on each other, they would kidnap each other’s singers and belly dancers and hold them hostage, shooting them in the kneecaps eventually.
Over time, jealousy becomes an element as indispensable as paint in the life of the master artist.
Maybe you’ve heard the story of the man who was so driven by this curiosity that he roamed among soldiers in battlefields. He sought a man who had died and returned to life amid the wounded struggling for their lives in pools of blood, a soldier who could tell him about the secrets of the Otherworld. But one of Tamerlane’s warriors, taking the seeker for one of the enemy, cleared him in half with a smooth stroke of his scimitar, causing him to conclude that in the Hereafter man is split in two.
Because Anna Karenina could not read the novel she held in her hands, we read Anna Karenina the novel.
Even if you did believe in God, it would make no sense to believe alone. You’d have to believe in Him as the poor do; you’d have to become one of them. It’s only by eating what they eat, living where they live, laughing at the same jokes and getting angry whenever they do that you can believe in their God. If you’re leading an utterly different life, you can’t be worshipping the same God they are. God is just enough to know that it’s not a question of reason or logic but how you live your life.
Thoughts ramble through my head like nervous burglars in a pitch-black house.
The future of a society was not determined by the traits its members shared but rested entirely on their differences.
To derive pleasure from a novel is to enjoy the act of departing from words and transforming these things into images in our mind.
People don’t know when they’re happy, at least not while it’s going on.
The Holy Guide reminded him that in Islam labor was a form of prayer.
My death conceals an appalling conspiracy against our religion, our traditions and the way we see the world. Open your eyes, discover why the enemies of the life in which you believe, of the life you’re living, and of Islam, have destroyed me. Learn why one day they might do the same to you.
Walking fueled his imagination and reminded him that there was another realm within our world, hidden away behind the walls of a mosque, in a collapsing wooden mansion, or inside a cemetery.
We embraced. This so pleased me that I felt no guilt. I let myself be borne away by sweet emotion. I hugged him tighter. I let him kiss me, and I kissed him back. And as we kissed, it was as if the entire world had entered a gentle twilight. I wished everybody could embrace each other the way we did. I faintly recalled that love was supposed to be like this.
Of course he was conceited: having devoured most of what had been accomplished before his time, he turned up his nose at it all; he had no doubt he’d do better; he had no equal; he knew he was more intelligent and creative than anyone else. In short, he was an average youth.
The tree is bent when it is young.
The larger and more colorful a city is, the more places there are to hide one’s guilt and sin; the more crowded it is, the more people there are to hide behind.
I’m not indignant,” I said indignantly.