Quotes by Orhan Pamuk

About Orhan Pamuk:

Ferit Orhan Pamuk is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his work has sold over eleven million books in sixty languages, making him the country's best-selling writer.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Orhan Pamuk

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.

Orhan Pamuk

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.

Orhan Pamuk

Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.

Orhan Pamuk

...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, rar...

Orhan Pamuk

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.

Orhan Pamuk

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

Orhan Pamuk

In the cities of the European Franks, women roam about exposing not only their faces, but also their brightly shining hair (after their necks, their most attractive feature), their arms, their beautiful throats, and even, if what Ive heard is true, a...

Orhan Pamuk

Contrary to what is commonly believed, all murderers are men of extreme faith rather than unbelievers.

Orhan Pamuk

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

Orhan Pamuk

To know is to remember that you've seen.To see is to know without remembering. Thus painting is remembering the blackness.

Orhan Pamuk

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 preciously what they cannot depict. That's why they substitute the joy of seeing for the joy of life.

Orhan Pamuk

I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.

Orhan Pamuk

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

Orhan Pamuk

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 lif...

Orhan Pamuk

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.

Orhan Pamuk

Life is beautiful if you are on the road to somewhere

Orhan Pamuk

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 f...

Orhan Pamuk

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?

Orhan Pamuk

Çünkü bana göre siyaset, en sonunda bizim gibi olmayanları kararlılıkla anlamama, romancılık ise anlama işidir.

Orhan Pamuk

Eventually, we come to love certain novels because we have expended so much imaginative labor on them. This is why we hang on to those novels, whose pages are creased and dog-eared.

Orhan Pamuk

Author Bio

  • NameOrhan Pamuk
  • DescriptionTurkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient
  • AliasesPamuk
  • BornJune 7, 1952
  • CountryTurkey
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist; Screenwriter; Essayist
  • WorksThe White Castle; The Black Book; The New Life; My Name Is Red; Snow; Istanbul: Memories And The City; The Museum Of Innocence
  • AwardsNobel Prize In Literature; Officer Of The Legion Of Honour; Peace Prize Of The German Book Trade; Prix Du Meilleur Livre Étranger; Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; International Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival Award For Best Original Screenplay; Grinzane Cavour Prize; International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; Prix Médicis; Ovid Prize; Norman Mailer Prize