How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another's heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known? Even if the world's rich and powerful were to put themselves in the shoes of the rest, how much would they really understand the wretched millions suffering around them? So it is when Orhan the novelist peers into the dark corners of his poet friend's difficult and painful life: How much can he really see?

What is the thing you want most from me? What can I do to make you love me?' Be yourself,' said Ipek.

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.

It is not my intention to explain Turkey, its culture and its problems. My literature has a universal concern: I want to bring people and their emotions closer to my readers, not explain Turkish politics.

Ka knew very well that life was a meaningless string of random incidents

Sometimes I would see them not as mementos of the blissful hours but as the tangible precious debris of the storm raging in my soul.

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