novelists-from-turkey

"It is because of identity politics – we are, sadly, becoming more tribal. The expectation seems to be that a writer from each tribe must tell the story of that tribe. I’m Turkish but also many other things. For me, imagination is a desire to transcend boundaries. When we write, we can be multiple."

"I have met lots of women who have grown up in Turkey who cannot bring themselves to swear in Turkish. But in English they use the F-word all the time. Writing is like that for me."

"I learned to pay attention to the readers and not to the madness…Because to be a writer in Turkey is a bit like being kissed on one cheek and slapped on the other."

"Many women are asking: why do some women choose to cover their heads? We have to understand this and other questions. This is one of the biggest challenges for feminism today. What is worrying is that when women are divided into categories it is the status quo – the patriarchy – that benefits.…"

"Suddenly, 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 our memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room."

"I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well."

"Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. I never thought of it before: I'd been living luminously between two eternities of darkness."

"When you love a city and have explored it frequently on foot, your body, not to mention your soul, gets to know the streets so well after a number of years that in a fit of melancholy, perhaps stirred by a light snow falling ever so sorrowfully, you'll discover your legs carrying you of their own accord toward one of your favorite promontories."

"The drinking of coffee is an absolute sin! Our Glorious Prophet did not partake of coffee because he knew it dulled the intellect, caused ulcers, hernia and sterility; he understood that coffee was nothing but the Devil's ruse."

"Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors, as attentive people like yourselves might examine footprints to catch a thief."

"Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity."

"What was venerated as style was nothing more than an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand."

"Yet does illustrating in a new way signify a new way of seeing?"

"For if a lover's face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home."

"A letter doesn’t communicate by words alone. A letter, just like a book, can be read by smelling it, touching it and fondling it. Thereby, intelligent folk will say, “Go on then, read what the letter tells you!” whereas the dullwitted will say, “Go on then, read what he’s written!”"

"Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight."

"All great masters, in their work, seek that profound void within color and outside time."

"Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love?"

"Are you an angel that approaching you should be so terrifying?"

"The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion; if you want to live in that paradise where happy mares and stallions live, open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony."

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

"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."

"There are moments in all our lives when we realize, even as we experience them, that we are living through events we will never forget, even long afterward."

"T feel like the Devil not because I’ve murdered two men, but because my portrait has been made in this fashion."

"In actuality, we don’t look for smiles in pictures of bliss, but rather, for the happiness in life itself. Painters know this, but this is precisely what they cannot depict. That’s why they substitute the joy of seeing for the joy of life."

"When another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free."

"The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy."

"My country or the stars Or my youth, what's farthest?"

"The strangest of our powers Is the courage to live Knowing that we will die, Knowing nothing more true."

"Loneliness feels like prison."

"The world's not run by governments or money but people rule a hundred years from now maybe but it will be for sure."

"Separation isn't time or distance it's the bridge between us finer than silk thread sharper than swords"

"Because of you, each day is a melon slice smelling sweetly of earth Because of you, all fruits reach out to me as if I were the sun. Thanks to you, I live on the honey of hope. You are the reason my heart beats. Because of you, even my loneliest nights smile like an Anatolian kilim on your wall. Should my journey end before I reach my city, I've rested in a rose garden thanks to you. Because of you I don't let death enter, clothed in the softest garments, and knocking on my door with songs calling me to the greatest place."

"All I wrote about us is lies All I wrote about us is the truth"

"Welcome baby, It's your turn to live, They lie in wait for you, chicken pox, whooping cough, smallpox, Malaria, TB, heart disease, cancer, and so on. Unemployment, hunger, and so on. Train wrecks, bus accidents, plane crashes, work accidents, Earthquakes, floods, droughts, and so on. Heartbreak, alcoholism, and so on. Nightsticks, prison doors, and so on. They lie in wait for you, the atom bomb, and so on. Welcome baby, It's your turn to live. They lie in wait for you, socialism, communism, and so on."

"You're my bondage and my freedom, my flesh burning like a naked summer night, you're my country. Hazel eyes marbled green, you're awesome, beautiful, and brave, you're my desire always just out of reach."

"Looking at this insolent earth, you hear the first battle cry of our species- trap it under a rock and together, screaming, attack and destroy it, as if killing a mammoth."

"At eighteen the heart shoots like a pebble from a slingshot and the head doesn't sit on the shoulder."

"At eighteen you sleep without memories."

"At eighteen you don't think about memories, you tell them."

"This earth will grow cold, a star among stars and one of the smallest, a gilded mote on blue velvet— I mean this, our great earth. This earth will grow cold one day, not like a block of ice or a dead cloud even but like an empty walnut it will roll along in pitch-black space... You must grieve for this right now —you have to feel this sorrow now— for the world must be loved this much if you're going to say "I lived"..."

"Today is Sunday. For the first time they took me out into the sun today. And for the first time in my life I was aghast that the sky is so far away and so blue and so vast I stood there without a motion. Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion leaning against the white wall. Who cares about the waves with which I yearn to roll Or about strife or freedom or my wife right now. The soil, the sun and me... I feel joyful and how."

"You waste the attention of your eyes, the glittering labour of your hands, and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves of which you'll taste not a morsel; you are free to slave for others— you are free to make the rich richer. The moment you're born they plant around you mills that grind lies lies to last you a lifetime. You keep thinking in your great freedom a finger on your temple free to have a free conscience. Your head bent as if half-cut from the nape, your arms long, hanging, your saunter about in your great freedom: you're free with the freedom of being unemployed. You love your country as the nearest, most precious thing to you. But one day, for example, they may endorse it over to America, and you, too, with your great freedom— you have the freedom to become an air-base. You may proclaim that one must live not as a tool, a number or a link but as a human being— then at once they handcuff your wrists. You are free to be arrested, imprisoned and even hanged. There's neither an iron, wooden nor a tulle curtain in your life; there's no need to choose freedom: you are free. But this kind of freedom is a sad affair under the stars."

"Don’t live in the world as if you were renting Or here only for the summer, But act as if it were your father’s house. Believe in seeds, earth, the sea But people above all. Grieve for the withering branch, The dying star, And the hurt animal. But feel for people above all. Rejoice in all the earth’s blessings – Darkness and light, The four seasons, But people above all."

"It's this way: being captured is beside the point, the point is not to surrender."

"I've never regretted I was born too soon. I'm proud to be a child of the twentieth century. I'm satisfied to join its ranks on our side and fight for a new world..."

"I'm twenty-seven, she's seventeen. "Blind Cupid, lame Cupid, both blind and lame Cupid said, Love this girl,""