Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. I never thought of it before: I'd been living luminously between two eternities of darkness.

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

East and West are coming together. Whether in peace or anarchy - they are coming together. There needn't be a clash between East and West, between Islam and Europe.

Of course in Turkey I'm seen as being on the 'Western' side, criticised by the nationalists, criticised by the communitarians as not belonging. Even, sometimes, criticised for looking at my country through Western eyes. And in the Western media I'm portrayed as belonging to the East.

My hero wants to belong too, but he doesn't want to give up all the things he came to value in the west.

As soon as I observed myself from outside myself, I recognized and understood that I had a long-standing habit of keeping an eye on myself. That's how I managed to pull myself together, over the years, checking myself from the outside.

I don’t like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels … I keep my deep radical things for my novels.