Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.

All great masters, in their work, seek that profound void within color and outside time.

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

Turks have a dismissive phrase: he works like a clerk. I have turned this insult around: I am proud to say that I work like a clerk.

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.

I am proud to be a Turk, and to write in Turkish about Turkey - and to have been translated into about 40 languages. But I don't want to politicize things by dramatizing them.

There's been quite a clear upswing in nationalist sentiments. Everyone is talking about it, in Turkey as well.