I consider myself a person who comes from a Muslim culture. In any case, I would not say that I'm an atheist. So I'm a Muslim who associates historical and cultural identification with this religion.

We had no desire to live in Istanbul, nor in Paris or New York. Let them have their discos and dollars, their skycrapers and supersonics transports. Let them have their radios and their color TV, hey, we have ours, don't we? But we have something they don't have. Heart. We have heart. Look, look how the light of life seeps into my very heart

Nationalism stems from catastrophes, whether they are caused by earthquakes or lost wars.

The gap between compassion and surrender is love’s darkest, deepest region.

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

She looked out the window; in her eyes was the light that you see only in children arriving at a new place, or in young people still open to new influences, still curious about the world because they have not yet been scarred by life.

Mankind's greatest error, the biggest deception of the past thousand years is this: to confuse poverty with stupidity.