Author

A museum should not just be a place for fancy paintings but should be a place where we can communicate our lives through our everyday objects.

From Orhan Pamuk

'Snow' is my most popular book in the United States. But in Turkey, it was not as popular as 'My Name is Red,' or even 'The Museum of Innocence,' because the secular leaders didn't want this bourgeois Orhan trying to understand these head-scarf girls.

From Orhan Pamuk

Modernity means overabundance. We are living in the age of mass-produced objects, things that come without announcing themselves and end up on our tables, on our walls. We use them - most of us don't even notice them - and then they vanish without fanfare.

From Orhan Pamuk

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.

From Orhan Pamuk

Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wilde's books in a bookshop makes me smile.

From Orhan Pamuk

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.

From Orhan Pamuk

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.

From Orhan Pamuk

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.

From Orhan Pamuk

The secularists in Turkey haven't underestimated religion, they just made the mistake of believing they could control it with the power of the army alone.

From Orhan Pamuk

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

From Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk

Notable Quotes

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