After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy.

— Orhan Pamuk

After all, isn't the purpose of the novel, or of a museum, for that matter, to relate our memories with such sincerity as to transform individual happiness into a happiness all can share?

— Orhan Pamuk

Age had not made him less handsome, as is so often the case; it had simply made him less visible.

— Orhan Pamuk

A man could be at the coffee-house every evening laughing and playing cards with his friends, he could have so much fun with his classmates that there is never a moment they aren't exploding into laughter, he could spend every hour of the day chatting with his intimates, but if that man has been abandoned by God, he'd still be the loneliest man on earth.

— Orhan Pamuk

...and awakening, at that moment, to the thrilling prospect of complete surrender, not just of one’s lips but of one’s entire body to a lover’s mercy, we recognized that the gap between compassion and surrender is love’s darkest, deepest region.

— Orhan Pamuk

A novelist is essentially a person who covers distance through his patience, slowly, like an ant. A novelist impresses us not by his demonic and romantic vision, but by his patience.

— Orhan Pamuk

Any intelligent person knows that life is a beautiful thing and that the purpose of life is to be happy," said my father as he watched the three beauties. "But it seems only idiots are ever happy. How can we explain this?

— Orhan Pamuk

As I was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, it occurred to me that if all else failed, a man could at least kiss himself, and I stared in to the mirror, conjuring up the memory of the couple in the film. I couldn't get the image of their lips out of my mind. But by now I'd realized I'd not even be kissing myself; I'd be kissing the mirror.

— Orhan Pamuk

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

— Orhan Pamuk

...at the end of the day there was nothing to be gained by reminding people that everything that had ever been written, even the greatest and most authoritative texts in the world, were about dreams, not real life, dreams conjured up by words.

— Orhan Pamuk