Pamuk Love Quotes & Sayings

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

I consider myself Istanbul's storyteller. My subject matter is my town. I consider it my job to explore the hidden patterns of my city's clandestine corners, its shady, mysterious places, the things I love. — Orhan Pamuk

Sometimes I would see them not as mementos of the blissful hours but as the tangible precious debris of the storm raging in my soul. — Orhan Pamuk

Love is the urgency to hold fast to another and to be together in the same place. It's the desire to keep the world out by embracing another. It is the yearning to find a safe harbor for the human soul. — Orhan Pamuk

It has happened to all of us. One day, one ordinary day when we imagine we're making our routine rounds in the world with ticket stubs and tobacco shreds in our pockets, our heads full of news items, traffic noise, troublesome monologues, we suddenly realize we are already someplace else, that we are not actually where our feet have taken us.
I had long slipped away, I had melted into a color paler than pale when I stood behind the windowpane made of ice. If you are to come down to earth, or any kind of reality, you must then hold a girl, that girl, hold on to her and win her love. — Orhan Pamuk

But just like believing in God, falling in love is such a sacred feeling that it leaves you with no room for any other passions. — Orhan Pamuk

I must be myself, I said over and over. I must forget these people buzzing inside my head, I must forget their voices, their smells, their demands, their love, their hate, and be myself, I must be myself, I told myself, as i gazed down at the legs resting so happily on the stool, and I told myself again as I looked up to watch the smoke I'd blown up to the ceiling; I must be myself, because if I failed to be myself, I become the person they wanted me to be; if I had to be that insufferable person, I'd rather be nothing at all. It would be better if I didn't exist,... — Orhan Pamuk

But no one believes in that way what he reads in a novel ... Oh yes they do. If only to see themselves as wise and superior and humanistic, they need to think of us as sweet and funny, and convince themselves that they sympathize with the way we are and even love us. — Orhan Pamuk

What is the thing you want most from me? What can I do to make you love me?'
Be yourself,' said Ipek. — Orhan Pamuk

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

If we go to Frankfurt together it won't be long, I'm sure, before I love you. I'm not like you; it takes me longer than two days to fall in love with someone. If you're patient, if you don't break my heart with your Turkish jealousies, I'll love you deeply. — Orhan Pamuk

If we love someone very much, we know that even if we give him the most valuable thing we have, we know not to expect harm from him. This is what a sacrifice is. Who — Orhan Pamuk

...love is deep attention, deep compassion... — Orhan Pamuk

Contrary to popular opinion, a man can shut love out if he wants to. But to do so, he must free himself not only from the woman who has bewitched him but also from the third person in the story, the ghost who has put temptation in his way. — Orhan Pamuk

Every person has a star, every star has a friend, and for every person carrying a star there is someone else who reflects it, and everyone carries this reflection like a secret confidante in the heart. — Orhan Pamuk

When two people love each other as we do, no one can come between them, no one," I said, amazed at the words I was uttering without preparation. "Lovers like us, because they know that nothing can destroy their love, even on the worst days, even when they are heedlessly hurting each other in the cruelest , most deceitful ways, still carry in their hearts a consolation that never abandons them." (p.191) — Orhan Pamuk

We fall in love more deeply when we're unhappy. — Orhan Pamuk

Happiness means being close to the one you love, that's all. (Taking immediate possession is not necessary.) — Orhan Pamuk

I realized that the longing for art, like the longing for love, is a malady that blinds us, and makes us forget the things we already know, obscuring reality. — Orhan Pamuk

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 she now felt that she was on the threshold of a new life, a happiness bound to endure for a very long time. — Orhan Pamuk

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. — Orhan Pamuk

Love is the ability to make the invisible visible and the desire always to feel the invisible in one's midst. — Orhan Pamuk

It's such a shame that we know so little about our own country, that we can't find it in our hearts to love our own kind. Instead we admire those who show our country disrespect and betray its people. — Orhan Pamuk

At times like this what matters is not our words but our demeanor, not the magnitude or elegance of our grief but the degree to which we can express fellowship with those around us. I sometimes think that our love of cigarettes owes nothing to the nicotine, and everything to their ability to fill the meaningless void and offer an easy way of feeling as if we are doing something purposeful. — Orhan Pamuk

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. — Orhan Pamuk

Every idiot assumes there's a pressing circumstance about his love that necessitates particular haste, and thereby lays bare the intensity of his love, unwittingly putting a weapon into the hands of his beloved. If his lover is smart, she'll postpone the answer.The moral: Haste delays the fruits of love. — Orhan Pamuk

It may not happen in the first instant, but within ten minutes of meeting a man, a woman has a clear idea of who he is, or at least who he might be for her, and her heart of hearts has already told her whether or not she's going to fall in love with him. — Orhan Pamuk

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 favourite promontories — Orhan Pamuk

I saw myself in the mirror, and from my expression I had a shocking intimation of the rift between my body and my soul. Whereas my face was drained by defeat and shock, inside my head was another universe: I now understood as an elemental fact of life that while I was here, inside my body was a soul, a meaning, that all things were made of desire, touch, and love, that what I was suffering was composed of the same elements. — Orhan Pamuk

How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known? — Orhan Pamuk

Immersing oneself in the problems of a book is a good way to keep from thinking of love. — Orhan Pamuk

Love points the way, empties you of the stuff of life, carries you at last to the mystery of creation. — Orhan Pamuk

The gap between compassion and surrender is love's darkest, deepest region. — Orhan Pamuk

But I think it must be easier for a girl to marry someone she doesn't know, because the more you get to know men, the harder it is to love them. — Orhan Pamuk

'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. — Orhan Pamuk

Nothing makes you happy in life except love... Neither the books you write or cites you see... I am very lonely... If I say that I want to be here in this city close to you until the end of my life would you believe me? — Orhan Pamuk

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. — Orhan Pamuk

Like most Turkish men of my world who entered into this predicament, I never paused to wonder what might be going on in the mind of the woman with whom I was madly in love, and what her dreams might be; I only fantasized about her. — Orhan Pamuk

Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space. — Orhan Pamuk

Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world. — Orhan Pamuk

Not a day passes when the eagle of dark depression doesn't take flight in my soul, said Sunay, infusing his words with mysterious pride. But I cannot catch myself. So hold yourself in. All's well that ends well. — 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

Over time, the persona I assumed in her presence came to supplant my true self. It must have been then I first came to realize that for most people life was not a joy to be embraced with a full heart but a miserable charade to be endured with a false smile, a narrow path of lies, punishment, and repression. — Orhan Pamuk

What was the difference between love and the agony of waiting? Like love, the agony of waiting began in the muscles and somewhere around the upper belly but soon spread out to the chest, the thighs, and the forehead, to invade the entire body with numbing force. — Orhan Pamuk

My dark beloved, my troubled hero, were you unable to sleep for thinking of me the whole night? Is that why the blush has left your face? — Orhan Pamuk

Love is a sacred silence. — Orhan Pamuk

I write because I have an innate need to. I write because I can't do normal work. 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. — Orhan Pamuk

After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy. — Orhan Pamuk

People who make fun of everything can never truly fall in love, nor truly believe in God. — Orhan Pamuk

There are two kind of men,' said Ka, in a didatic voice. 'The first kind does not fall in love until he's seen how the girls eats a sandwich, how she combs her hair, what sort of nonsense she cares about, why she's angry at her father, and what sort of stories people tell about her. The second type of man
and I am in this category
can fall in love with a woman only if he knows next to nothing about her. — Orhan Pamuk

It's important, no doubt, to understand the person we love. If we cannot manage this, it's necessary, at least, to believe we understand them. I must confess that over the entire eight years I only rarely enjoyed the contentment of the second possibility, let alone the first. — Orhan Pamuk

Humanity has one strength that no one has: that is we may feel the feelings, pain, jealousy, failure, love, happiness of others and identify with them, and even see the world through their own eyes. — Orhan Pamuk

In poetically well built museums, formed from the heart's compulsions, we are consoled not by finding in them old objects that we love, but by losing all sense of Time. — Orhan Pamuk

Love is good for the skin. — Orhan Pamuk

But it is these four heroes, whom I will discuss from time to time in this book, whose poems, novels, stories, articles, memoirs, and encyclopedias opened my eyes to the soul of the city in which I live. For these four melancholic writers drew their strength from the tensions between the past and the present, or between what Westerners like to call East and West; they are the ones who taught me how to reconcile my love for modern art and western literature with the culture of the city in which I live. — Orhan Pamuk

I came across humanity in Istanbul, and all I know about life comes from Istanbul, and definitely, I am writing about Istanbul. I also love the city because I live there, it has formed me, and it's me. Of course it is natural. If somebody lived all his life in Delhi, he will write about Delhi. — Orhan Pamuk

When we lose people we love, we should never disturb their souls, whether living or dead. Instead. we should find consolation in an object that reminds you of them, something ... I don't know ... even an earring — Orhan Pamuk

My fear was not the fear of God but, as in the case of the whole Turkish secular bourgeoisie, fear of the anger of those who believe in God too zealously( ... ) I experienced the guilt complex as something personal, originated less from the fear of distancing myself from God than from distancing myself from the sense of community shared by the entire city . — Orhan Pamuk

If we give what we treasure most to a Being we love with all our hearts, if we can do that without expecting anything in return, then the world becomes a beautiful place. — Orhan Pamuk

The ideal story should begin innocently like a fairy-tale, be frightening like a nightmare in the middle, and conclude sadly like a love story ending in separation. — Orhan Pamuk

Don't worry - love that blooms this fast is just as fast to wither — Orhan Pamuk

To be left with only the trace of a memory is to gaze at an armchair that's still molded to the form of a love who has left never to return: It is to grieve, dear reader, it is to weep. — Orhan Pamuk