WHAT MAKES CITY LIFE MEANINGFUL IS THE THINGS WE HIDE.
To be able to see the Bosphorus, even from afar—for İstanbullus this is a matter of spiritual import that may explain why windows looking out onto the sea are like the mihrabs in mosques, the altars i...
The gap between compassion and surrender is love’s darkest, deepest region.
Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love?
Over time, I have come to see the work of literature less as narrating the world than seeing the world with words.From the moment he begins to use words like colors in a painting, a writer can begin t...
Listen to me: Life is not about principles; it`s about happiness.``But if you don`t have any principles, and if you don`t have faith, you can`t be happy at all,` said Kadife.`That`s true. But in a bru...
If we give what we treasure most to a Being we love with all our hearts, if we can do that without expecting anything in return, then the world becomes a beautiful place.
I amused myself with mental games in which I changed the focus, deceived myself, forgot altogether what had been troubling me or wrapped in a mysterious haze.We might call this confused, hazy state me...
How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another's heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments...
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.
Good fiction is about asserting the beauties of the world, inventing a new, positive thing. Where am I going to get that? And it should be original; it should not be cliched. So the way I looked at hi...
We read novels because we want to see the world through other experiences, other beings, other eyes, other cultures.
صرّح صاحب دكان يحب الكلام الوجيز بأن الزبائن في الحقيقة لا يشترون الألبسة، بل يشترون خيالاً.ما أرادوا شراءه في الحقيقة هو أن يكونوا مثل الآخرين الذين يرتدون تلك الألبسة.
We're not stupid! We're just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction
To know is to remember that you've seen.To see is to know without remembering. Thus painting is remembering the blackness.
To 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.
These were innocent people, so innocent that they thought poverty a crime that wealth would allow them to forget. --- from the notebooks of Celal Salik
My fear was not the fear of God but, as in the case of the whole Turkish secular bourgeoisie, fear of the anger of those who believe in God too zealously(...) I experienced the guilt complex as someth...
Life is beautiful if you are on the road to somewhere
It was in Cihangir that i first learned Istanbul was not an anonymous multitude of walled-in lives - a jungle of apartments where no one knew who was dead or who was celebrating what - but an archipel...