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Orhan Pamuk QUOTES

21 " I realized that the longing for art, like the longing for love, is a malady that blinds us, and makes us forget the things we already know, obscuring reality. "

― Orhan Pamuk , The Museum of Innocence

22 " We don't need more museums that try to construct the historical narratives of a society, community, team, nation, state, tribe, company, or species. We all know that the ordinary, everyday stories of individuals are riches, more humane, and much more joyful. "

― Orhan Pamuk , The Innocence of Objects

23 " Where there is a true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity. "

― Orhan Pamuk , My Name Is Red

24 " Many years before, Ka had explained to me that when a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to feel to the margins; it was, he said, this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art. "

― Orhan Pamuk

25 " We read novels because we want to see the world through other experiences, other beings, other eyes, other cultures. "

― Orhan Pamuk

26 " Perhaps one day someone from a distant land will listen to this story of mine. Isn't this what lies behind the desire to be inscribed in the pages of a book? Isn't it just for the sake of this delight that sultans and viziers proffer bags of gold to have their histories written? "

― Orhan Pamuk , My Name Is Red

27 " Time had not faded my memories (as I had prayed to God it might), nor had it healed my wounds as it is said always to do. I began each day with the hope that the next day would be better, my recollections a little less pointed, but I would awake to the same pain, as if a black lamp were burning eternally inside me, radiating darkness. "

― Orhan Pamuk , The Museum of Innocence

28 " ...the waiting was torture, the worst Ka had ever known. It was this pain, this deadly wait, he now remembered, that had made him afraid to fall in love. "

― Orhan Pamuk

29 " Ka found it very soothing: for the first time in years, he felt part of a family. In spite of the trials and responsibilities of what was called 'family', he saw now the joys of its unyielding togetherness, and was sorry not to have known more of it in his life. "

― Orhan Pamuk , Snow

30 " She looked out the window; in her eyes was the light that you see only in children arriving at a new place, or in young people still open to new influences, still curious about the world because they have not yet been scarred by life. "

― Orhan Pamuk , The Museum of Innocence

Orhan Pamuk QUOTES

31 " When, after hours of lovemaking, we quickly dressed and left
the apartment, I sometimes thought that Füsun was also taking care not to get “carried away” by her
feelings for me. A proper understanding of my story depends, I think, on a full appreciation of the
pleasure we took from these sweet shared moments. I am certain that the fire at the heart of my tale is the
desire to relive those moments of love, and my attachment to those pleasures. "

― Orhan Pamuk

32 " In a brutal country like ours, where human life is 'cheap', it's stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries. "

― Orhan Pamuk , Snow

33 " ...at the end of the day there was nothing to be gained by reminding people that everything that had ever been written, even the greatest and most authoritative texts in the world, were about dreams, not real life, dreams conjured up by words. "

― Orhan Pamuk , The Black Book

34 " ...it seemed to me that the entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising out memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room "

― Orhan Pamuk , My Name Is Red

35 " They, like me, like all of us, had, once upon a time, in a past so far away it seemed like heaven, caught by chance a glimpse of an inner essence, only to forget what it was. It was this lost memory that pained us, reduced us to ruins, though still we struggled to be ourselves. "

― Orhan Pamuk , The Black Book

36 " Remembering the past always comes with an image or a view attached. "

― Orhan Pamuk , The Innocence of Objects

37 " To be left with only the trace of a memory is to gaze at an armchair that's still molded to the form of a love who has left never to return: It is to grieve, dear reader, it is to weep. "

― Orhan Pamuk , The Black Book

38 " How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known? "

― Orhan Pamuk , Snow

39 " ...and awakening, at that moment, to the thrilling prospect of complete surrender, not just of one’s lips but of one’s entire body to a lover’s mercy, we recognized that the gap between compassion and surrender is love’s darkest, deepest region. "

― Orhan Pamuk

40 " Life is beautiful if you are on the road to somewhere "

― Orhan Pamuk , The New Life