Let everyone know, I lived a very happy life.

With the death of my father, it wasn't just the objects of everyday life that had changed; even the most ordinary street scenes had become irreplaceable mementos of a lost world whose every detail figured in the meaning of the whole.

After all, isn't the purpose of the novel, or of a museum, for that matter, to relate our memories with such sincerity as to transform individual happiness into a happiness all can share?

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.

My diary has its own kind of magic. It gives me the feeling of having accomplished something. On days when I don't have time for this, I feel tortured.

How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another's 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? Even if the world's rich and powerful were to put themselves in the shoes of the rest, how much would they really understand the wretched millions suffering around them? So it is when Orhan the novelist peers into the dark corners of his poet friend's difficult and painful life: How much can he really see?

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