Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors, as attentive people like yourselves might examine footprints to catch a thief.
Orhan PamukRead
I don't much care whether rural Anatolians or Istanbul secularists take power. I'm not close to any of them. What I care about is respect for the individual.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of individual respect over political affiliations or regional differences.
Orhan Pamuk expresses a disinterest in the political power dynamics between different groups in Turkey, such as the rural Anatolians and the secularists in Istanbul. Instead, he highlights that his primary concern lies in the respect granted to each individual, suggesting that personal dignity should take precedence over political identities or societal divisions.
In practice
During a discussion on social justice, this quote can be used to emphasize the value of individual rights.
Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors, as attentive people like yourselves might examine footprints to catch a thief.
The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.
Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.
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.
We had no desire to live in Istanbul, nor in Paris or New York. Let them have their discos and dollars, their skycrapers and supersonics transports. Let them have their radios and their color TV, hey, we have ours, don't we? But we have something they don't have. Heart. We have heart. Look, look how the light of life seeps into my very heart
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.
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.
To have opinions is to sell out to youself. To have no opinions is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.
I like flawed characters, and I like seeing people who are supposed to be not villains but antagonists. There are elements to them, which are really annoying, but you kind of see where they came from. You see the things that caused those inadequacies.
Everyone has a responsibility to not only tolerate another person's point of view, but also to accept it eagerly as a challenge to your own understanding. And express those challenges in terms of serving other people.
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