National consciousness is truly a miraculous thing. When I am not in Turkey I feel even more Turkish than in Istanbul. But when I'm home my European side becomes more apparent.

Turks have a dismissive phrase: he works like a clerk. I have turned this insult around: I am proud to say that I work like a clerk.

When Turkey began approaching the EU, I wasn't the only one who worried that the dark stain in Turkey's history - or rather the history of the Ottoman Empire - could become a problem one day. In other words, what happened to the Armenians in World War I. That's why I couldn't leave the issue untouched.

For the traveler we see leaning on his neighbor is an honest and well-meaning man and full of melancholy, like those Chekhov characters so laden with virtues that they never know success in life.

Great changes in the direction of peace have often come from people who were no great advocates of peace to begin with.

My 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.

And before long , the msuic , the views rushing past the window , my fathers voice and the narrow cobblestone streets all merged into one , and it seemed to me that while we would never find answers to these fundamental questions , it was good for us to ask them anyway . pg. 284