Orhan Pamuk Quotes

I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

To us, the value of a work lies in its newness: the invention of new forms, or a novel combination of old forms, the discovery of unknown worlds or the exploration of unfamiliar areas in worlds already discovered - revelations, surprises.

The element of truth in the concept of genius is to be sought in the object, in what is open, not confined by repetition.

If you know everything, it keeps you from writing. You don't want a story to burn you out instead of surprising you.

I have to challenge myself, and I have to challenge the reader. We should be weaving and working on new stories and not the same story over and over.

A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.

Every story is different, so what is a detail in one might not be in something else. Diversity is something I embrace and love about my work.

What gets me excited is the original principle.

And if there's anything movies can do in a way that I just love, and I love as an audience is, 'Show me something I don't know about. Show me something I haven't seen.'

When I try to write I try to write something different every time. That's the challenge.

Make something new, and define territory that's never been. I fall in love with shows because I've never see that before. I fall in love with new vocabularies.

Good literature can be created only with something that is different from literature.

Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.

I think we're giving people something new that people didn't know was out there before.

Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

I don't believe that anything's totally invented... If you're completely inventing a story, there wouldn't be an urge to tell it.

I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.

Well, you know, writers just suck up new experiences - we're just like the vacuum cleaners of newness.

Nothing much interested me other than playing with language and telling stories and doing something with the wonders of the world around me.

If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

As long as there are things to wonder about, there are stories to be written about them. That makes me happy, because writing about things seems to be my thing.

I'm a storyteller; that's what exploration really is all about. Going to places where others haven't been and returning to tell a story they haven't heard before.

The possibilities are infinite with new writing; every time you open a new script, there's no limit to what it might contain.