Orhan Pamuk Quotes

The Nobel prize is a fairytale for a week and a nightmare for a year. You can't imagine the pressure to give interviews, to go to book fairs.

When I was on the bestseller list with the first book, everyone who knows me knows that every week it continued to be on the list was a very dark week for me. Everyone knows that all I wanted was to be off that list.

Don't feel bad if you never 'get famous.' Don't freak out if you have less than 300 Twitter followers.

It has gotten worse as I'm becoming more successful. My nerves. Just because there's a bit more pressure, and people are expecting a lot more from me.

One minute you're a developing athlete trying to get to the top, then the next minute you do well and win a medal somewhere, and then it's all foisted on you. You never know when it's going to happen. You don't think about the media side of things when you're a young athlete trying to do well.

A sold-out house my first night back. Do you have any idea what kinda pressure that is? I could have been at home in my warm bed, playing Nintendo.

I know I'll be under a spotlight, I know I'll be under the microscope.

Winning Nobel imposed on me a lifestyle to which I am not used and which I would not have preferred.

Is the prestige conferred by the Man Booker prize for the book or me? I would prefer it on the book and for me to be treated ordinarily.

After I won the Oscar for 'Pollock,' some newspaper printed, 'She should get a million-dollar bump.' My sisters would write me, 'You're gonna get this million-dollar bump!'

You can't possibly prepare for what happens to you the day you hit No. 1 and people treat you differently.

Even if you are a best-seller you feel insecure because it is all so unpredictable.

Success is never bad in Hollywood. It is what you do with success that will dog you.

My countrymen have the right to shake my hand and talk to me if they so wish. Don't forget that their support and their reading of my works is what brought me the Nobel prize.

I think being famous is more of a hindrance, a constraint, than just letting yourself be free.

The prestige of the Nobel Prize is such that one is suddenly promoted to a new status.

Walking into a show when I was 16, at that time when it was the No. 1 hit show, and replacing a character comes with so many expectations. I felt a lot of pressure with that.

You have the feeling that if you get a Pulitzer, you're somehow set for life.

I do feel pressure. I have always been able to surprise people because they didn't know to expect anything from me. And now people are starting to have expectations.

It's a really scary thing, having your dreams come true and seeing everything you ever wanted happening, getting the attention for it and then not knowing how to handle it properly.

Sometimes I just wish nobody knew who I was.

There's a funny thing about fame. The truth is you run as fast as you can towards it because it's everything you want. Not just the fame but what it represents, meaning work, meaning opportunity. And then you get there, and it's shocking how immediately you become enveloped in this world that is incredibly restricting.

Having that amount of nominations makes me a little nervous, because you feel that the bar is really high, the expectations are really high, but it also feels great.

Fame is a magnifying glass

Luckily, I don't think that I'm too famous. I can still live my life pretty comfortably. Fame has never really ever appealed to me. I think it's easy to see that it's not a great thing to have.