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Quotes by Turkish Authors

"Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space."

"When we look at the old photographs, we always ask three main questions: Are they alive? If they are, where are they? And finally, what is their life story? Photography is an art of creating many questions in the mind of the viewer!"

"It seemed to me that the entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising out memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room."

"Let me first state forthright that contrary to what we've often read in books and heard from preachers, when you are a woman, you don't feel like the Devil."

"When the whole world reads your books, is there any other happiness for a writer? I am happy that my books are read in 57 languages. But I am focused on Istanbul not because of Istanbul but because of humanity. Everyone is the same in the end."

"Do something very praiseworthy in your youth or in your middle age so that you can spend all your time talking about it in your old age!"

"Who can live without eating? A farmer is a great hero because he fights for our existence! If anyone deserves a medal of existence in a country, that person should be a farmer!"

"Look at every creature from the window of compassion with the eyes of love!"

"I do know this much though: If a man resorts to wiles, guile and petty deceptions, it means he's nowhere near being in love."

"Because, as I would always tell myself so many years later, lying here in my bed: You can't start out again in life, that's a carriage ride you only take once, but with a book in your hand, no matter how confusing and perplexing it might be, once you've finished it, you can always go back to the beginning; if you like, you can read it through again, in order to figure out what you couldn't understand before, in order to understand life, isn't that so, Fatma?"

"Every life is like a snowflake: individual existences might look identical from afar, but to understand one s own eternally mysterious uniqueness one had only to plot the mysteries of one s own snowflake."

"When the reality looks magnificent, a real art of photography has only one choice: To capture this beauty magnificently!"

"Good fiction is about asserting the beauties of the world, inventing a new, positive thing. Where am I going to get that? And it should be original; it should not be cliched. So the way I looked at history was not to accuse it of failure."

"Any belief which encourages you to use your own intellect, which motivates you to question everything and points out your own mind as the only road for your salvation is a good belief!"

"There are no mighty mountains for the universe, because there are no mountains for the universe, no rivers, no sun and no clouds! There is only universe for the universe, just a single entity!"

"Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow."

"If the path you walk is the right one, then the big question comes: How many people have you directed to that path?"

"An excellent photograph is the one which has excellently captured an excellent moment!"

"With faith, you may get stuck in a very big lie and may lose the truth forever; but with doubt, you can always reach the truth!"

"On the Night of the Halloween, I have never seen any evil apparition or fearsome ghost but politicians on TV! They are the real goblins and specters!"

"You will always remain lonely till the day you meet a person who can understand your mind deeply!"

"To write is to transform that inward gaze into words, to study the worlds into which we pass when we retire into ourselves, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy."

"Plains watch the mountains and mountains watch the plains. Through looks, everything touches everything, even though they have many kilometers or even light years between them!"

"To read a novel is to wonder constantly, even at moments when we lose ourselves most deeply in the book: How much of this is fantasy, and how much is real?"

"Everyman has the ability to lie but luckily not everyman has the ability to hide their lies masterly!"

"Choices are abundant, it is the right decision which is the rare one!"

"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."

"I need the pain of loneliness to make my imagination work."

"In youth, the greatest success is to see the world from the eyes of the aged people and to feel exactly how they feel."

"Contrary to what the West seems to think, it is not poverty that brings people like us so close to God. It's the fact that no one is more curious than we are to learn why we are here on earth and what will happen to us in the next world."

"Most of the time it's not the Europeans who belittle us. What happens when we look at them is that we belittle ourselves. When we undertake the pilgrimage, it's not just to escape the tyranny at home but also to reach to the depths of our souls. The day arrives when the guilty must return to save those who could not find the courage to leave."

"Why pay money for the horror movies? Just go to a street without trees!"

"I would be pleased if someone would invent a pill to remove my impatience, moodiness, and occasional bursts of anger. But if they did, I wouldn't be able to write my novels or paint."

"To know a very different person from ourselves is a great luck for us!"

"When we see an innocent child, this is an ordinary thing; but when we see an innocent adult, this is an extraordinary thing!"

"May be you have already reached your target, but if you don't know this, you will move away from your target!"

"For a man who is in poverty, doomsday is already there!"

"When the boat is waiting for you, when the rows are waiting for you, when the calm sea is waiting for you, when the sun is waiting for you, when everything is ready to help you to move forward, be there or those who wait will go away!"

"Days passing with discovery are the days of real happiness."

"A hungry cat does no favour to a trapped bird!"

"When we were monkeys, we were more human because we were at least not destroying the nature those days!"

"Life is short, and we should respect every moment of it."

"If you have ever walked in Paris, you will see that Paris will ever walk in your memoires!"

"Man is often the prisoner of the culture he lives in. Question your culture to break the prison doors! Question it so that you can be able to see the incredible stupidities in your culture!"

"Every man must have a peaceful place to contemplate. If you do not have such a place, you must find one!"

"Wherever wind visits, there it freshens the air; wherever wisdom visits, there it freshens the mind!"

"Blessed are those who encounter a mystery in their lives because they obtain a big opportunity to live the great joy of solving puzzles!"

"Man will be free only when he frees both himself and all other creatures!"

"Those who can truly see, know."
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