01c. 1952 ADWhere there is a true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
02c. 1952 ADMany years before, Ka had explained to me that when a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to feel to the margins; it was, he said, this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
03c. 1952 ADWe read novels because we want to see the world through other experiences, other beings, other eyes, other cultures.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
04c. 1952 ADPerhaps one day someone from a distant land will listen to this story of mine. Isn't this what lies behind the desire to be inscribed in the pages of a book? Isn't it just for the sake of this delight that sultans and viziers proffer bags of gold to have their histories written?Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
05c. 1952 ADTime had not faded my memories (as I had prayed to God it might), nor had it healed my wounds as it is said always to do. I began each day with the hope that the next day would be better, my recollections a little less pointed, but I would awake to the same pain, as if a black lamp were burning eternally inside me, radiating darkness.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
06c. 1952 AD...the waiting was torture, the worst Ka had ever known. It was this pain, this deadly wait, he now remembered, that had made him afraid to fall in love.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
07c. 1952 ADKa found it very soothing: for the first time in years, he felt part of a family. In spite of the trials and responsibilities of what was called 'family', he saw now the joys of its unyielding togetherness, and was sorry not to have known more of it in his life.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
08c. 1952 ADShe 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.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
09c. 1952 ADWhen, after hours of lovemaking, we quickly dressed and leftthe apartment, I sometimes thought that Füsun was also taking care not to get “carried away” by herfeelings for me. A proper understanding of my story depends, I think, on a full appreciation of thepleasure we took from these sweet shared moments. I am certain that the fire at the heart of my tale is thedesire to relive those moments of love, and my attachment to those pleasures.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
10c. 1952 ADIn a brutal country like ours, where human life is 'cheap', it's stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
11c. 1952 AD...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.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
12c. 1952 AD...it seemed to me that the entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising out memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same roomOrhan Pamuk / quote ↗
13c. 1952 ADThe power of things inheres in the memories they gather up inside them, and also in the vicissitudes of our imagination, and our memory--of this there is no doubt.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
14c. 1952 ADThey, like me, like all of us, had, once upon a time, in a past so far away it seemed like heaven, caught by chance a glimpse of an inner essence, only to forget what it was. It was this lost memory that pained us, reduced us to ruins, though still we struggled to be ourselves.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
16c. 1952 ADTo be left with only the trace of a memory is to gaze at an armchair that's still molded to the form of a love who has left never to return: It is to grieve, dear reader, it is to weep.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
17c. 1952 ADHow much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known?Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
18c. 1952 AD...and awakening, at that moment, to the thrilling prospect of complete surrender, not just of one’s lips but of one’s entire body to a lover’s mercy, we recognized that the gap between compassion and surrender is love’s darkest, deepest region.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
21c. 1952 ADThe only antidote to the loneliness of the streets was the streets themselves.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
22c. 1952 ADA man could be at the coffee-house every evening laughing and playing cards with his friends, he could have so much fun with his classmates that there is never a moment they arent´t exploding into laughter, he could spend every hour of the day chatting with his intimates, but if that man has been abandoned by God, he´d still be the loneliest man on earth.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
23c. 1952 ADMaybe you've understood by now that for men like myself, that is, melancholy men for whom love, agony, happiness and misery are just excuses for maintaining eternal loneliness, life offers neither great joy nor great sadness.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
24c. 1952 ADAs 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.Orhan Pamuk / quote ↗
