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" I like to think that I know a lot of words, but I definitely don't know all of them. "

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" Imagination is really dependent on memory and observation, these things that we think of as part of nonfiction writing, actually. "

" One of the most painful parts of a breakup is having the feeling that your life is a story, and then the other person leaves and takes the story with them. And you're left there without it. You're left in this version of life that's basically a succession of events and interactions that don't seem to be going anywhere. "

" Russian literature got me interested in what literature means. "

" Every time a meteor comes close to the earth, we all think about the end of the world - but our internal soundtrack doesn't turn off. We're also thinking about pizza or passing a slow tractor or making a turn, and for a magical instant, our lives seem to be in conversation with the stars. "

" It's kind of an embarrassing story - that's why it's called 'The Idiot.' But looking back at your past self, you see that this person had reasons for everything she did. There's a whole lot of awkwardness, but really, what should one be embarrassed about? "

" Soccer is taken extremely seriously in Turkey. "

" Listing and counting have a spooky, magical power, and the holiday season is a spooky, magical time. "

" To think of Tolstoy eating a sandwich is intrinsically kind of funny. "

" I grew up thinking that it was immoral to idealize the past because, in the past, there was slavery and no penicillin. "

" Awkwardness is the consciousness of a false position. "

" I do think of 'The Idiot,' in a way, as a self-standing book about a certain struggle to make meaning, the struggle for a girl to find meaning outside of the romance plot. "

" There are very few things that I have any patience for that are not at least a little bit humorous. "

" I don't believe in being ashamed about not having read things. "

" I felt grateful to Ataturk that my parents were so well educated, that they weren't held back by superstition or religion, that they were true scientists who taught me how to read when I was three and never doubted that I could become a writer. "

" If you are in a breakup, you might as well go all the way and spend the summer in Samarkand, with no air-conditioning, learning a language you have no use for. At least it adds some romance to a depressing situation. "

" Most Americans have probably heard the song 'Santa Claus Is Coming to Town' about a billion times in the supermarket alone. "

" No time you spend writing will be wasted - even if you write something that's bad. "

" When I was growing up, many of my relatives had never seen a black person before. Today, hundreds, maybe thousands of Africans live in Istanbul's old city alone. It's hard to imagine their lives in their human totality. "

" Reading Epictetus, I realized that most of the pain in my life came not from any actual privations or insults but, rather, from the shame of thinking that they could have been avoided. "

" As a novelist, you write about social mores, but not everything can be explained. "

" Lists are based on realism - on the coldly contemplated finitude of resources. "

" When I read that nobody should ever feel ashamed to be alone or to be in a crowd, I realized that I often felt ashamed of both of those things. "

" A lot of fiction doesn't answer a question that any reasonable person would ever ask. "

" You base your actions on a projected ending, which you actually don't know. However, when you reach the crucial point, and the pinnacle event doesn't occur, you just need to go on, and something else will happen. "

" There's a lot to be said for an American-style liberal-arts education, which prevents young people from professionalizing right away. "

" Awkwardness comes from the realization that, when you look around the world, it's difficult to identify anyone who isn't either the victim or the beneficiary of injustice. "

" There's definitely a culture of Russian literature in Turkey. And in the U.S. too, to an extent - especially Dostoevsky. "

" The novel is like a melancholy form. It's about some kind of disillusionment with the way things are versus the idea of how they could be or how they used to be. "

" I think it is true that when we're older, we realize the way that people act is... you know, everyone's kind of talking off the cuff, and everyone's, you know, spitballing sometimes. "

" I always wanted to write novels, even before I had read a lot of novels or had a very good idea of what they were. "