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"Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head."
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"What makes people tick? Life can be a trap of ennui, but imagery may be a redemptive escape from dullness. The iconic power and exuberance of images generate an inexorable addiction that needs to be gratified without respite. Here and now! ['Give me more images']"

"The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind."

"For me poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose."

"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness."

"Anyone who knew Violet well could tell she was thinking hard, because her long hair was tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. Violet had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so her brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers, and gears, and she never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair."

"I always said you have to be really smart or really dumb to play this game well. I just don't know where I fit in."

"At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air."

"My brain has become my enemy. We fight over creation and his need for sleep."

"The longer Ellen Cherry thought about it, the more convinced she became that the mission of the artist in an overtechnologized, overmasculinized society was to call the old magic back to life.Could it be done? Yeah, you pessimistic wimps, it could. Could she do it? Probably not, but she could give it a whirl."

"Creativity is the residue of time wasted."
Explore more quotes by Orhan Pamuk

"In a brutal country like ours where human life is cheap, it's stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs, high ideals--only people living in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.' 'Actually, it's the other way round. In a poor country the only consolation people can have is the one that comes from their beliefs."

"There's been quite a clear upswing in nationalist sentiments. Everyone is talking about it, in Turkey as well."

"Maybe you've understood by now that for men like myself, that is, melancholy men for whom love, agony, happiness and misery are just excuses for maintaining eternal loneliness, life offers neither great joy nor great sadness."

"My mood, as I identify with each of my heroes, resembles what I used to feel when I played alone as a child. Like all children, I liked to play make-believe, to put myself in someone else's place and imagine dream worlds in which I was a soldier, a famous soccer player, or a great hero."

"A man could be at the coffee-house every evening laughing and playing cards with his friends, he could have so much fun with his classmates that there is never a moment they arent t exploding into laughter, he could spend every hour of the day chatting with his intimates, but if that man has been abandoned by God, he d still be the loneliest man on earth."

"The waiting was torture, the worst Ka had ever known. It was this pain, this deadly wait, he now remembered, that had made him afraid to fall in love."

"The real question is how much suffering we've caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols - and using women as pawns in a political game."

"The knowledge that she could learn to love a man had always meant more to her than loving him effortlessly, more even than falling in love, and that was why now she felt herself to be on the threshold of a new life, a happiness bound to endure for a very long time."

"The Museum of Innocence' is not about politics; it's a love story, but I think it's political in the sense that it wants to capture how a man suppresses a woman."
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