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" For me, Westernization is not about consuming fanciful goods; it's about a system of free speech, democracy, egalitarianism and respect for the people's rights and dignity. "

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" I don't much care whether rural Anatolians or Istanbul secularists take power. I'm not close to any of them. What I care about is respect for the individual. "

Orhan Pamuk

Power

Respect

Take

" We should not judge Islam by terrorists. All civilizations and cultures produce terrorists. Every time there is a flag-burning, killing, or provocative films, I'm worried, not because something radical will happen, and this time, some people are killed. We're very sorry for that. "

" Being a fiction writer makes you someone who works with irresponsibility. "

" Just as good books give me the joys of being alive, bad novels depress me, and as I notice this sentiment coming from the pages, I stop. I also do not hesitate to walk out of a movie house if the film is bad. "

" My hero wants to belong too, but he doesn't want to give up all the things he came to value in the west. "

" The habit of collecting, of attachment to things, is an essential human trait. But Western civilization put collecting on a pedestal by inventing museums. Museums are about representing power. It could be the king's power or, later, people's power. "

" If a writer is to tell his own story - tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people - if he is to feel the power of the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table and patiently give himself over to this art - this craft - he must first have been given some hope. "

" We fall in love more deeply when we're unhappy. "

" Self-hatred is OK. I have self-hatred, too. It's OK. What's bad is if you don't know how to get out of it, don't know how to manage it. Self-hatred is, in fact, a good thing if you can clearly see the mechanism of it, because it helps you to understand others. "

" I strongly believe that the art of the novel works best when the writer identifies with whoever he or she is writing about. Novels in the end are based on the human capacity, compassion, and I can show more compassion to my characters if I write in a first person singular. "

" Idealism, unrealistic idealism, is always contrasted with the reality of the people, of the man in the street. The details of daily life are always more convincing than the political fantasies of the earlier generations. "

" I have the legacy of my father and his nocturnal automatic waking up. But I like those periods. I immediately have a different vision of humanity and my life. "

" I write a world where everyone is partly right. "

" Language is me, in a way. Really, I feel it. "

Orhan Pamuk

Really

Way

" One side of me is very busy paying attention to the details of life, the humanity of people, catching the street voices, the middle-class, upper-middle-class secret lives of Turks. The other side is interested in history and class and gender, trying to get all of society in a very realistic way. "

" When people read a novel 600 pages long, six months pass, and all they will remember are five pages. They don't remember the text - instead, they remember the sensations the text gives them. "

" The challenge is to lend conviction even to the voices which advocate views I find personally abhorrent, whether they are political Islamists or officers justifying a coup. "

" I don't like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels... I keep my deep, radical things for my novels. "

" When I write, I feel that I'm writing with my intellect. When I paint, I think it's some other force making me paint. I - as I wrote in my novel 'My Name is Red' - watch with amazement what my hand is doing on the paper, what kind of line, what kind of strange, beautiful thing it's doing in spite of my will, so to speak. "

Orhan Pamuk

Writing

Beautiful

" The truly great books are always novels: 'Anna Karenina,' 'The Brothers Karamazov,' 'The Magic Mountain.' Just as with 'Shahnameh,' I browse these books from time to time to remember how a great book works on us or to teach my students at Columbia University. "

" I always enjoy impersonating my characters in the first-person singular. "

" I really don't want to portray the Islamists as simply evil, the way it's often done in the west. "

" When the whole world reads your books, is there any other happiness for a writer? I am happy that my books are read in 57 languages. But I am focused on Istanbul not because of Istanbul but because of humanity. Everyone is the same in the end. "

" I think less than people think I do about politics. I care about writing. "

" I see Turkey's future as being in Europe, as one of many prosperous, tolerant, democratic countries. "

" To appropriate an invention, be it artistic or technical, you have to have at least a part of your spirit embracing it so radically that you somehow change. "

" I would be pleased if someone would invent a pill to remove my impatience, moodiness, and occasional bursts of anger. But if they did, I wouldn't be able to write my novels or paint. "

" Well, on the one hand the Turks have the legitimate need to defend their national dignity - and this includes being recognized as a part of the west and Europe. "

" I sometimes feel nervous because I give stupid answers to certain pointless questions. It happens in Turkish as much as in English. I speak bad Turkish and utter stupid sentences. "

" Authoritarianism, an unrealistic occidental imagination - these issues will never be settled. Turkey will continue to take Europe as a model; it will continue to pursue its search for democracy. "