Orhan Pamuk Quotes

I had to try to figure out what it would be like to do things for the first time, almost as if you're a child.

To me, everything is always new. People involved in my personal life make fun of me a lot for not being jaded.

Kids will remind you that, even though you've gone down a road 100 times, it's brand new for them - and that's healthy.

A child, not knowing what is extraordinary and what is commonplace, usually lights midway between the two, finds interest in incidents adults consider beneath notice, and calmly accepts the most improbable occurrences.

What are so mysterious as the eyes of a child?

I think I am a child. Everything blows my mind.

When you're a kid, you're not as corrupted by the world at large. You're not corrupted by prejudices. You're much more open-minded. Much more interested in the world around you. 'Sweet Tooth' is about the world returning to that kind of place.

I have found that children are the most open-minded of all my audiences. They are not set in their ways. They are open to ideas.

I've always tried to retain that childlike wonder.

I think one of the reasons we have children is to believe everything all over again. And I'm not talking Santa, here, either.

Young children have no sense of wonder. They bewilder well, but few things surprise them. All of it is new to young children, after all, and equally gratuitous.

And that's what innocence is. It's simple and trusting like a child, not judgmental and committed to one narrow point of view. If you are locked into a pattern of thinking and responding, your creativity gets blocked. You miss the freshness and magic of the moment. Learn to be innocent again, and that freshness never fades.

You've had a whole lot of experience, but everything is also radically new at each moment, and you have to bring a kind of childlike second-level innocence to bear upon all situations, if you are going to be of use and you are going to really learn from the situation or the people.

I love child things because there's so much mystery when you're a child.

The child and the great artist -- these alone receive the sensation fresh as it was at the beginning of the world.

Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.

Great men have the nature of a child.

I think I still keep my sense of wonder, which I call childlike, not childish, childlike. I still have a vivid imagination, and I like to try a lot of new things.

Children always turn towards the light. Oh that grown-up people in this world became like little children!

I try to convey this feeling of being innocent in a mystical state, being in a place that's new, seeing things with brand new eyes, for better or worse. I just imagine this little kid floating on a beautiful king-size bed over the city at night, seeing all sorts of crazy stuff happening in the world. To me, half the fun is all the stories other people have.

I had a teacher in Paris, who said that if an actor forgot what it's like to play as a child he shouldn't be an actor. I've always loved being with children. It's marvellous to see the fresh ways they see the world. Watching them look at a tree or a river helps you to understand something that's very important.

See the world as if for the first time; see it through the eyes of a child, and you will suddenly find that you are free.

Walt Disney, of all people, did a good job of describing his own netony. "People who have worked with me say I am 'innocence in action,'" he wrote. "They say I have the innocence and unselfconsciousness of a child. Maybe I have. I still look at the world with uncontaminated wonder."

You have to be again innocent, ignorant, not knowing anything, so that the questions can start arising again. Again the inquiry becomes alive, and with the inquiry becoming alive you cannot vegetate. Then life becomes an exploration, an adventure.

Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver.