Whenever I find myself talking of the beauty and the poetry of the Bosphorus and Istanbul’s dark streets, a voice inside me warns against exaggeration, a tendency perhaps motivated by a wish not to acknowledge the lack of beauty in my own life. If I see my city as beautiful and bewitching, then my life must be so too. A.

— Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk Quotes

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.

— Orhan Pamuk

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.

— Orhan Pamuk

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.

— Orhan Pamuk

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.

— Orhan Pamuk

Over time, jealousy becomes an element as indispensable as paint in the life of the master artist.

— Orhan Pamuk

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.

— Orhan Pamuk

Because Anna Karenina could not read the novel she held in her hands, we read Anna Karenina the novel.

— Orhan Pamuk

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.

— Orhan Pamuk

Thoughts ramble through my head like nervous burglars in a pitch-black house.

— Orhan Pamuk

The future of a society was not determined by the traits its members shared but rested entirely on their differences.

— Orhan Pamuk

To derive pleasure from a novel is to enjoy the act of departing from words and transforming these things into images in our mind.

— Orhan Pamuk

People don’t know when they’re happy, at least not while it’s going on.

— Orhan Pamuk

The Holy Guide reminded him that in Islam labor was a form of prayer.

— Orhan Pamuk

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.

— Orhan Pamuk

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.

— Orhan Pamuk

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.

— Orhan Pamuk

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.

— Orhan Pamuk

The tree is bent when it is young.

— Orhan Pamuk

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.

— Orhan Pamuk

I’m not indignant,” I said indignantly.

— Orhan Pamuk
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