Quotes by Orhan Pamuk

• The opponents of this process have always tried to vilify westernization as a poor imitation.
• Well, on the one hand the Turks have the legitimate need to defend their national dignity - and this includes being recognized as a part of the west and Europe.
• I really don't want to portray the Islamists as simply evil, the way it's often done in the west.
• I see Turkey's future as being in Europe, as one of many prosperous, tolerant, democratic countries.
• I want to describe the psychological state of the people in a certain city.
• My hero wants to belong too, but he doesn't want to give up all the things he came to value in the west.
• The challenge is to lend conviction even to the voices which advocate views I find personally abhorrent, whether they are political Islamists or officers justifying a coup.
• The hero of the book does long to experience God. But his conception of God is very western.
• At first my publisher had reservations about publishing it in the form you are familiar with.
• There's been quite a clear upswing in nationalist sentiments. Everyone is talking about it, in Turkey as well.
• These political movements flourish on the margins of Turkish society because of poverty and because of the people's feeling that they are not being represented.
• The secularists in Turkey haven't underestimated religion, they just made the mistake of believing they could control it with the power of the army alone.