" How many people in this country had felt it necessary to hide their true identities as both of my grandmothers had done? How many people, like my brother, were terrified that their history of “tainted blood” might be discovered? How much better it might have been if we’d all been allowed to be who we are, if we’d been free to build a multiethnic, multicultural society. We’d been so imprisoned by the nationalist myth promulgated by those who felt that in order to create a nation they had to create a national identity. Yet the myth was so fragile that those who felt their existence depended on it had to resort to violence and intimidation to protect it. "

― Zülfü Livaneli , Serenad