People only tell lies when there is something they are terribly frightened of losing.

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?

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

I believe strongly in an author's moral responsibility. But his first obligation is to write good books.

The challenge is to lend conviction even to the voices which advocate views I find personally abhorrent, whether they are political Islamists or officers justifying a coup.

Ka thought it strangely depressing that the suicide girls had had to struggle to find a private moment to kill themselves. Even after swallowing their pills, even as they lay quietly dying, they’d had to share their rooms with others.

I see Turkey's future as being in Europe, as one of many prosperous, tolerant, democratic countries.