There's a lot of pride involved in my refusal to believe in god.

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.

...the endless repetition of an ordinary miracle.

As always after drinking too much, I felt like my own ghost trying to take it's first solo walk outside the body.

When you look into the faces of these quiet creatures who don't know how to tell stories--who are mute, who can't make themselves heard, who fade into the woodwork, who only think of the perfect answer after the fact, after they're back at home, who can never think of a story that anyone else will find interesting--is there not more depth and more meaning in them? You can see every letter of every untold story swimming on their faces, and all the signs of silence, dejection, and even defeat. You can even imagine your own face in those faces, can't you?

It's a great relief for me that no one will ask me anymore: "Orhan, when will you get the Nobel Prize?"

I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well.