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To some extent, I draw on what I see around me; in other places, I imagine what I write.

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.

What I wish to show when I paint is the way I see things with my eyes and in my heart.

I paint people not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.

I don't paint. I am a hobbyist photographer, so I relate to the visual arts that way, but I'm not a painter.

Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing.

I love to draw and paint. I'm very active in that way, but I'm not very good with the written word, though.