617 Quotes by Orhan Pamuk

My fear, which I shared with everyone in the Turkish secular bourgeoisie, was not of God but of the fury of those who believed in Her too much.

As I was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, it occurred to me that if all else failed, a man could at least kiss himself, and I stared in to the mirror, conjuring up the memory of the couple in the film. I couldn’t get the image of their lips out of my mind. But by now I’d realised I’d not even be kissing myself; I’d be kissing the mirror.

To give charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and wonders of the world before us.

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.

I do know this much though: If a man resorts to wiles, guile and petty deceptions, it means he’s nowhere near being in love.

Only imbeciles are innocent.

If we love someone very much, we know that even if we give him the most valuable thing we have, we know not to expect harm from him. This is what a sacrifice is.

Like most Turkish men of my world who entered into this predicament, I never paused to wonder what might be going on in the mind of the woman with whom I was madly in love, and what her dreams might be; I only fantasized about her.

I have hired a bodyguard, on the recommendation of my friends and the government. It’s outrageous, having to live like this.