I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.

I do not believe in a personal connection to God; that's where it gets transcendental.

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

To read a novel is to wonder constantly, even at moments when we lose ourselves most deeply in the book: How much of this is fantasy, and how much is real?

Turkey, with its political intolerance, as I have described it, is prepared to march forward, to break with its taboo about the Armenians, and is making great strides with respect to human rights and freedom of speech so that it can join the European Union. This alone shows how powerful the European idea is.

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 really don't want to portray the Islamists as simply evil, the way it's often done in the west.