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 wrote 'My Name is Red' just to remember painting, where the hand does it before the intellect. When I'm captive to it, I'm a happier person. Kierkegaard tells us that a happy person is someone who lives in the present; the unhappy person, someone who lives either in the past or the future.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the joy of living in the present moment and the intrinsic connection between creativity and happiness.
In this quote, Orhan Pamuk reflects on the act of painting as a means of connecting with the present moment. He suggests that true happiness comes from engaging with life as it unfolds, rather than being preoccupied with past regrets or future anxieties. By invoking Kierkegaard's philosophy, Pamuk emphasizes the importance of creativity and the flow of artistic expression in fostering a joyful existence.
Themes
HappinessPresentPaintingArtMindfulness
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about creativity, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of living in the moment.
More from Orhan Pamuk
All quotes βThe 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.
Orhan PamukRead
Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.
Orhan PamukRead
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.
Orhan PamukRead
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
Orhan PamukRead
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.
Orhan PamukRead
Similar quotes
I was trained in classical piano, but it kind of dawned on me that classical pianists compete for six job openings a year, and the rest of us get to play 'Blue Moon' in a hotel lobby.
Barbara KingsolverRead
I'd rather have just one person who reads and feels my work deeply than hundreds of thousands who read it but don't really care about.
Derek WalcottRead
What a creature he was! Never have I felt such a horse between my knees. His great haunches gathered under him with every stride, and he shot forward ever faster and faster, stretched like a greyhound, while the windbeat in my face and whistled past my ears.
Arthur Conan DoyleRead
I hate good taste. It's the worst thing that can happen to a creative person.
Helmut NewtonRead
A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won't settle for anything less.
Martha GrahamRead
Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
E. M. ForsterRead