Afraid Quote by Orhan Pamuk

We're stuck. We're stuck between the East and the West. Between the past and the future. On the one hand there are the secular…

— Anonymous

“One of these was the perception that the Tanzimat had not tried to find compromise between the Islamic heritage and the European reforms and…

— Charles River Editors

It is not my intention to explain Turkey, its culture and its problems. My literature has a universal concern: I want to bring people…

— Orhan Pamuk

Celebrating historic triumphs is a favorite pastime for many Turks. Tales of how Turkic peoples emerged from Central Asia, crossed the steppes to Anatolia,…

— Stephen Kinzer

“This, I found, was what happened so often to me in Turkey: You’re learning about a country, you have read books, and so you…

— Suzy Hansen

“There ́s a metaphor which I love: living like a drawing compass. As you know, one leg of the compass is static, rooted in…

— Elif Shafak

The way I wrote it is a nice and enjoyable way to write stories, to pretend to say something when you're really saying something…

— Burhan Sonmez

“We in the West still seemed to believe the old story of how a man transformed an Islamic empire into a secular republic: Atatürk…

— Suzy Hansen

“We are Turks with the affections of our women; and have made them subscribe to our doctrine too. We let their bodies go abroad…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

“Ayşe has always admired the Ottoman talent for euphemism. The Auspicious Event was the massacre and execution of ten thousand Janissaries. Bodies had been…

— Ian McDonald

“One sultan, Ibrahim the Mad, encased his beard in a network of diamonds and passed his days tossing gold coins to the fish in…

— Robert K. Massie

My instinct is to write under the cloak of an opaque historical setting.

— Patrick deWitt