617 Quotes by Orhan Pamuk

...the endless repetition of an ordinary miracle.

...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 ideals--only people living in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.' 'Actually, it's the other way round. In a poor country the only consolation people can have is the one that comes from their beliefs.

Heroic dreams are the consolation of the unhappy. After all, when people like us say we're being heroic, it usually means we're about to kill each other--or kill ourselves.

But no one believes in that way what he reads in a novel...Oh yes they do. If only to see themselves as wise and superior and humanistic, they need to think of us as sweet and funny, and convince themselves that they sympathize with the way we are and even love us.

The knowledge that she could learn to love a man had always meant more to her than loving him effortlessly, more even than falling in love, and that was why she now felt that she was on the threshold of a new life, a happiness bound to endure for a very long time.

Ka knew very well that life was a meaningless string of random incidents

We're not stupid! We're just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction

Am ajuns la concluzia că "misterul" pe urmele căruia ne tot pui să gonim de ani de zile este, după cum știai și tu fără să știi, după cum scriai și tu fără să pricepi, următorul: în țara asta, nimeni nu poate fi el însuși! În țara celor înfrânți și zdrobiți, a exista înseamnă a fi altcineva. Sunt altcineva, prin urmare exist! ... Nu vă temeți, nimeni nu este el însuși, nimeni!

This is the greatest consolation in life. In poetically well-built museums, formed from the heart's compulsions, we are consoled not by finding in them old objects that we love, but by losing all sense of Time.