Hüzün does not just paralyze the inhabitants of Instanbul, it also gives them poetic license to be paralyzed.

What was the difference between love and the agony of waiting? Like love, the agony of waiting began in the muscles and somewhere around the upper belly but soon spread out to the chest, the thighs, and the forehead, to invade the entire body with numbing force.

The real question is how much suffering we've caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols - and using women as pawns in a political game.

I'm a relatively disciplined writer who composes the whole book before beginning to execute and write it. Of course, you can't hold - you cannot imagine a whole novel before you write it; there are limits to human memory and imagination. Lots of things come to your mind as you write a book, but again, I make a plan, chapter, know the plot.

There are two kind of men,' said Ka, in a didatic voice. 'The first kind does not fall in love until he's seen how the girls eats a sandwich, how she combs her hair, what sort of nonsense she cares about, why she's angry at her father, and what sort of stories people tell about her. The second type of man -- and I am in this category -- can fall in love with a woman only if he knows next to nothing about her.

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.

The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life