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

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

My decision to view the world through novels, as it were, which is a typically European way of looking at things, became a heavy burden for me. But I took it on consciously, even though it was torture for me.

In poetically well built museums, formed from the heart's compulsions, we are consoled not by finding in them old objects that we love, but by losing all sense of Time.

It's a great relief for me that no one will ask me anymore: "Orhan, when will you get the Nobel Prize?"

Love is a sacred silence.

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.