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.
Orhan PamukRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of self-expression through language and art, likening it to investigating clues left behind by an individual.
Orhan Pamuk's quote suggests that our words and choices in color reflect our identity and inner thoughts, much like footprints reveal the presence of a thief. It encourages deeper observation and interpretation of what a person communicates creatively, inviting attentive individuals to understand and appreciate the nuances of a person's character through their expressions.
Themes
IdentityExpressionLanguageArtCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
In a creative writing workshop, this quote can encourage participants to reveal their identities through their writing.
More from Orhan Pamuk
All quotes →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
What is love?” “I don’t know.” “Love is the name given to the bond Kemal feels with Füsun whenever they travel along highways or sidewalks; visit houses, gardens, or rooms; or whenever he watches her sitting in tea gardens and restaurants, and at dinner tables.” “Hmmm … that’s a lovely answer,~ But isn’t love what you feel when you can’t see me?” “Under those circumstances, it becomes a terrible obsession, an illness.
Orhan PamukRead
Similar quotes
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
Salman RushdieRead
I hope I never get so old I get religious.
Ingmar BergmanRead
If asked how to cope with a great host of the enemy in orderly array and on the point of marching to the attack, I should say: "Begin by seizing something which your opponent holds dear; then he will be amenable to your will." Rapidity is the essence of war: take advantage of the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots.
Sun TzuRead
Indulged habits of dependence create habits of indolence, and indolence opens the portal to petty errors, to many degrading habits, and to vice and crime with their attendant train of miseries.
Dorothea DixRead
Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.
Italo CalvinoRead
Did it ever strike you on such a morning as this that drowning would be happiness and peace?
Charles DickensRead