To each his own way and his own prayer. God does not take us at our word. He looks deep into our hearts. It is not the ceremonies or rituals that make a difference, but whether our hearts are sufficiently pure or not.

What is the point of roaming the world when it's the same misery everywhere?

I like to borrow a metaphor from the great poet and mystic Rumi who talks about living like a drawing compass. One leg of the compass is static. It is fixed and rooted in a certain spot. Meanwhile, the other leg draws a huge wide circle around the first one, constantly moving. Just like that, one part of my writing is based in Istanbul. It has strong local roots. Yet at the same time the other part travels the whole wide world, feeling connected to several cities, cultures, and peoples.

Words are heavy in Turkey, and every writer, every poet and every journalist knows that, because of a word, because of a sentence, because of a tweet or even a retweet, you can be sued, you can be demonized by the media and you can even land in prison.

I believe in optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect. But my hope is the people, the society, which is ahead of the government.

The words that come out of our mouths do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time.

We cannot abandon this rabbit hole for fear of a traumatic encounter with our own culture.