...every person has a star, every star has a friend, and for every person carrying a star there is someone else who reflects it, and everyone carries this reflection like a secret confidante in the heart.

My childhood proved to me that there could be no enjoyment of football without community. But it becomes difficult when this community is having problems with its identity. That's when we experience all possible forms of nationalist exaggeration.

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.

With the death of my father, it wasn't just the objects of everyday life that had changed; even the most ordinary street scenes had become irreplaceable mementos of a lost world whose every detail figured in the meaning of the whole.

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.

As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them

I certainly see myself more as a craftsman than as an artist.