Colour is the touch of the eye, Music to the deaf, A word out of darkness.

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

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

I work seven days a week, from 9 in the morning till 8 at night. I have the titles of the next eight novels I want to write. I feel myself pitiable, degraded on a day that I don't write.

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

The real question is how much suffering we've caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols - and using women as pawns in a political game.

I was at the end of my tether when my first book was published. For eight years I didn't make a penny, I worked so hard, didn't drink, didn't enjoy life.