Orhan Pamuk Quotes

On the meeting point of two worlds, the ornament of Turkish homeland, the treasure of Turkish history, the city cherished by the Turkish nation, İstanbul, has its place in the hearts of all citizens.

Some writing courses will advise you to write what you know. I've always thought this is very odd advice ... because it means, for example, that I should not be writing about Nicholas Flamel, because I didn't live in France in the 15th Century, I was not an alchemyst, am not immortal (despite the rumours) and do not know magic.

I've always found the Write-What-You-Know axiom small and stifling.

The traveller's-eye view of men and women is not satisfying. A man might spend his life in trains and restaurants and know nothing of humanity at the end. To know, one must be an actor as well as a spectator.

You either choose to view America as the shining city on the hill that inspires the best in all mankind, or you don't.

I can see myself wanting to write a historical novel - you don't need to worry about references to reality TV or pop music, you can just get on with the basics of story and character.

I had always wanted to tell a story that was set in Los Angeles in the '50s, because that's where I grew up, and it was the city of my childhood memories.

I had a good friend in New York City.

My views on birth control are somewhat distorted by the fact that I was seventh of nine children.

I've always dreamed of doing a period piece, I just never knew what it would be.

Magic is the power within oneself. You have enough strength and exertion and energy to view things as they are, personally, properly, and directly. You have the chance to experience the brightness of life and the haziness of life, which is also a source of power. The fantastically sharp-edged quality of life can be experienced personally and directly. There is a powerful sense of perception available to you.

In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets - when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta - there lived a tailor in Gloucester.

I'd always wanted to write something about the Korean War because of my heritage. My father lost his brother during the war, and I fictionalized that episode, which was told to me very briefly without much detail.

Sometimes when a character in a novel is difficult for me to enter, I sue something in myself or in my own life as a doorway into that character's mind and emotions.

I had an approach where everything that's happening it should be as though it's an experience for somebody. So if you're experiencing a hurricane, if you're experiencing a car crash or whatever it is, you're only experiencing as yourself, you're not experiencing it from some objective point of view.

When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.

L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it's simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won't have to hear the screams of the drowning.

The individual point of view is the only point of view from which one is able to look at the world in its truth.

I have a really interesting political point of view, and its not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you cant go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You cant. I wouldnt wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics every since.

I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.

In my experience I haven't met too many uptight black people. I'm sure they're out there. Like I'm some big authority and I've lived in the inner city and ghetto.

I really like the city of Vienna. I like its art, its music and its architecture. In short, I like the culture that Vienna represents. What really captures me is the period around 1900 - the time of Freud, Schnitzler and Klimt. This is the period in which the modern view of mind was born.

I miss Seattle a lot. It was my first city that I lived in on my own. It was a great city to play for. It was unfortunate for the fans what happened, but it’s time to move on. I’m sure they’ve moved on. But in the back of my mind, I still have a thing for Seattle and always am going to remember what they’ve done for me.

However you disguise novels, they are always biographies.

I wouldn't have known anything about Catholicism if I hadn't been dating Gert. In those days, Catholics were much less ecumenical than they are today. Gert was always of the mind that she wouldn't go to another church except the Catholic Church. So when I would date her in New York City and later when we went to Oxford before we got married we always went to the Catholic church.