617 Quotes by Orhan Pamuk

I need the pain of loneliness to make my imagination work.

Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.

And before long, the music, the views rushing past the window, my fathers voice and the narrow cobblestone streets all merged into one, and it seemed to me that while we would never find answers to these fundamental questions, it was good for us to ask them anyway.

An illustration that does not complement a story, in the end, will become but a false idol. Since we cannot possibly believe in an absent story, we will naturally begin believing in the picture itself.

If you act as if nothing has happened, and if nothing more comes of it, you will indeed find that nothing has happened after all.

However blissful it is being a soul without a body in the realm of the dead, so too is being a body without a soul among the living; what a pity nobody realizes this before dying.Therefore, during my lovely funeral, as I grievously watched my dear Shekure wear herself out weeping in vain, I begged of Exalted Allah to grant us souls-without bodies in Heaven and bodies-without-souls in life.

To know is to remember that you've seen.To see is to know without remembering. Thus painting is remembering the blackness.

In actuality, we don't look for smiles in pictures of bliss, but rather, for the happiness in life itself. Painters know this, but this is preciously what they cannot depict. That's why they substitute the joy of seeing for the joy of life.

The only antidote to the loneliness of the streets was the streets themselves.