Orhan Pamuk Quotes

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 than we ourselves have known? Even if the world's rich and powerful were to put themselves in the shoes of the rest, how much would they really understand the wretched millions suffering around them? So it is when Orhan the novelist peers into the dark corners of his poet friend's difficult and painful life: How much can he really see?

Love is to understand, at last, the suffering of another.

When you truly know the meaning of the word love, you will also know the meaning of the word pain.

I fervently wish no misery ever came near anyone; yet it is that alone that gives us an insight into the depths of our lives, does it not? In our moments of anguish, gates barred forever seem to open and let in many a flood of light.

I understand people's suffering, people's pain, more than you will every know yourself.

We may thank God that we can feel pain and know sadness, for these are the human sentiments that constitute our glory as well as our grief.

When I hear other people's stories, I like to believe that they contribute to my 'Encyclopedia of Human Experience.' The stories I hear help me expand my definition of what love is, what pain feels like, what sacrifice means, what laughter can do.

When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality

You'll never get to a person's soul until you understand their hurts.

I have a lot of compassion for human beings in life experiences, so I allow myself to feel what these characters are feeling and don't have a problem accepting that.

When you are suffering, you become more understanding about yourself, but also about other people's sufferings too. That's the first step to understand somebody is to understand their sufferings. So then love follows.

No deep and strong feeling, such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim.

You can't sing about love unless you know about it.

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering.

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.

I'm a sensitive guy; I respond to things that make my eyes well up a little bit, or make me root for people. I find the human condition interesting.

I don't think you can hate anything that you know intimately. There is no fine line separating love from hate because there's a deep chasm separating love from hate.

I don't think I can play a role without falling in love with something about her; even the most despicable people who I have portrayed had some aspect of them which I found beautiful.

I think we've all been kind of... everyone's been hurt, everyone's felt loss, everyone has exultation, everyone has a need to be loved, or to have lost love, so when you play a character, you're pulling out those little threads and turning them up a bit.

This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.

People aren't very good at other people's pain.

Only through loving and supporting one another, even in the face of unbearable pain and suffering, will this cycle of violence end.

I think that's an incredible thing that we can do as actors - to feel empathy toward someone that you may otherwise detest, you know?

When someone you love is in pain, you want to do anything to comfort them.