For if a lover's face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home.

Listen to me: Life is not about principles; it`s about happiness.` `But if you don`t have any principles, and if you don`t have faith, you can`t be happy at all,` said Kadife. `That`s true. But in a brutal country like ours, where human life is cheap, it`s stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.` `Actually, it`s the other way round. In a poor country, people`s sole consolation comes from their beliefs.

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.

...a nation could change its way of life, its history, its technology, its art, literature, and culture, but it would never have a real chance to change its gestures.

When another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free.

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.

It's such a shame that we know so little about our own country, that we can't find it in our hearts to love our own kind. Instead we admire those who show our country disrespect and betray its people.