Orhan Pamuk Quotes

Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world.

After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy.

Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head.

...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.

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.

Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love?

Any intelligent person knows that life is a beautiful thing and that the purpose of life is to be happy," said my father as he watched the three beauties. "But it seems only idiots are ever happy. How can we explain this?

I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.

The greatest happiness is when the eye discovers beauty where neither then mind conceived of nor the hand intended any.

There's a lot of pride involved in my refusal to believe in god.

Most of the time it's not the Europeans who belittle us. What happens when we look at them is that we belittle ourselves. When we undertake the pilgrimage, it's not just to escape the tyranny at home but also to reach to the depths of our souls. The day arrives when the guilty must return to save those who could not find the courage to leave.

Those who can truly see, know.

The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life

Contrary to what is commonly believed, all murderers are men of extreme faith rather than unbelievers.

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.

Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.

Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.

Clocks and calendars do not exist to remind us of the Time we've forgotten but to regulate our relations with others and indeed all of society, and this is how we use them.

Let me first state forthright that contrary to what we've often read in books and heard from preachers, when you are a woman, you don't feel like the Devil.

The real question is how much suffering we've caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols - and using women as pawns in a political game.