The knowledge that she could learn to love a man had always meant more to her than loving him effortlessly, more even than falling in love, and that was why she now felt that she was on the threshold of a new life, a happiness bound to endure for a very long time.

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

Heaven was the place where you kept alive the dreams of your memories.

She looked out the window; in her eyes was the light that you see only in children arriving at a new place, or in young people still open to new influences, still curious about the world because they have not yet been scarred by life.

The writers secret is not inspiration - for it is never clear where it comes from - it is his stubbornness, his patience.

It was in Cihangir that i first learned Istanbul was not an anonymous multitude of walled-in lives - a jungle of apartments where no one knew who was dead or who was celebrating what - but an archipelago of neighbourhoods in which everyone knew each other.

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