When another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free.

I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well.

The first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots; the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.

A writer in someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is.

True literature is more than just a story someone has told. It must provide the reader with the essence of the world on a moral, philosophical and emotional level.

When you love a city and have explored it frequently on foot, your body, not to mention your soul, gets to know the streets so well after a number of years that in a fit of melancholy, perhaps stirred by a light snow falling ever so sorrowfully, you'll discover your legs carrying you of their own accord toward one of your favourite promontories

I think it's horrible that we Turks are always seen under the aspect of Islam first. I am constantly asked about religion, and almost always with a negative undercurrent that makes me furious.