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.
Orhan PamukMy decision to view the world through novels, as it were, which is a typically European way of looking at things, became a heavy burden for me. But I took it on consciously, even though it was torture for me.
Orhan PamukSometimes I would see them not as mementos of the blissful hours but as the tangible precious debris of the storm raging in my soul.
Orhan Pamuk