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Quotes by Turkish Authors
"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."
"Man needs air, man needs water, man needs food and man needs adventure also! Adventure is a medicine for the infinite boredom."
"I'd been living luminously between two eternities of darknness."
"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."
"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 ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries."
"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!"
"A hungry cat does no favour to a trapped bird!"
"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."
"No person can walk all alone because to walk all alone one must have no memories at all from the past!"
"Every nation needs a crystal clear mirror to see its stupidities, to see its hypocrisies, to see its faults and its evils! No nation is saint! Every nation's history is full of primitiveness and barbarity, full of wars and murders! Let every nation sees its face very clearly! Let them face their faces so that in the future they may be something better!"
"The only antidote to the loneliness of the streets was the streets themselves."
"As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them."
"There are two kinds of Communists: the arrogant ones, who enter the fray hoping to make men out of the people and bring progress to the nation; and the innocent ones, who get involved because they believe in equality and justice. The arrogant ones are obsessed with power; they presume to think for everyone; only bad can come of them. But the innocents? The only harm they do is to themselves. But that's all they ever wanted in the first place. They feel so guilty about the suffering of the poor, and are so keen to share it, that they make their lives miserable on purpose."
"When the reality looks magnificent, a real art of photography has only one choice: To capture this beauty magnificently!"
"You can always challenge a big storm with a little boat and this will only prove how unserious person you are!"
"If you cannot create a meaning, the things you see will always look meaningless to you!"
"Blessed are those who encounter a mystery in their lives because they obtain a big opportunity to live the great joy of solving puzzles!"
"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?"
"In our household doubts more troubling than these were suffered in silence. The spiritual void I have seen in so many of Istanbul's rich, Westernised, secularist families is evident in these silences. Everyone talks openly about mathematics, success at school, football and having fun, but they grapple with the most basic questions of existence - love,compassion, religion, the meaning of life, jealousy, hatred - in trembling confusion and painful solitude. They light a cigarette, give their attention to the music on the radio, return wordlessly to their inner worlds."
"A silver-tongued charlatan and a half-wit society are made for each other! When these two come together in an election, a great disaster happens: Charlatan comes to power!"
"When you do something different, you are either blessed or cursed!"
"An excellent photograph is the one which has excellently captured an excellent moment!"
"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!"
"I don't much care whether rural Anatolians or Istanbul secularists take power. I'm not close to any of them. What I care about is respect for the individual."
"Find a calm lake and wait for the twilight in silence! There, existence will visit you with all its magnificence! The existence of the Existence can best be felt in the presence of dimness and in the absence of crowds and noises!"
"Days passing with discovery are the days of real happiness."
"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!"
"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!"
"All the beautiful corners of the world are the greatest mind and body healers!"
"Everyman has the ability to lie but luckily not everyman has the ability to hide their lies masterly!"
"When you sweep the universe, nothing changes, only the things change their places; when the universe sweeps you, nothing changes, only the things change their places!"
"When you swim, be a part of the sea; when you walk, be a part of the road! Integrate with the universe! See it not as a distinct entity, but as your own continuation, as your own self!"
"If the path you walk is the right one, then the big question comes: How many people have you directed to that path?"
"I have always thought that the place where you sleep or the place you share with your partner should be separate from the place where you write. The domestic rituals and details somehow kill the imagination. They kill the demon in me."
"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!"
"A cheerful music is a powerful light for the shadows of sorrow!"
"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."
"Life is short, and we should respect every moment of it."
"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."
"I need the pain of loneliness to make my imagination work."
"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."
"Suddenly Ka realized he was in love with Apek. And realizing that this love would determine the rest of his life, he was filled with dread."
"When we see an innocent child, this is an ordinary thing; but when we see an innocent adult, this is an extraordinary thing!"
"He was like an autumn without leaves, he was unreal!"
"Even the most perfect advice cannot be as useful as a staircase or a rope for those who live in the dark wells!"
"When we were monkeys, we were more human because we were at least not destroying the nature those days!"
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