Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wildes books in a bookshop makes me smile.

Life can't be all that bad,' i'd think from time to time. 'Whatever happens, i can always take a long walk along the Bosphorus.

I realized that the longing for art, like the longing for love, is a malady that blinds us, and makes us forget the things we already know, obscuring reality.

I don’t like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels … I keep my deep radical things for my novels.

No one drives me into exile, not even the nationalists.

I think a lot about the poems I wasn't able to write...I masturbrated...Solitude is essentially a matter of pride; you bury yourself in your own scent. The issue is the same for all real poets. If you've been happy for too long, you become banal. By the same token, if you've been unhappy for a long time, you lose your poetic power...Happiness and poverty can only coexist for the briefest time. Afterword either happiness coarsens the poet or the poem is so true it destroys his happiness.

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?