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.
No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.
God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.
All who contribute to the overthrow of religion, or to the ruin of kingdoms and commonwealths, all who are foes to letters and to the arts which confer honour and benefit on the human race (among whom I reckon the impious, the cruel, the ignorant, the indolent, the base and the worthless), are held in infamy and detestation.
You have no more anger when you are all love, bliss, infinite existence. . . .
To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
To work for the common good is the greatest creed.
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