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
Novels are political because in them, we try to identify with people who are not like us. And, in that sense, I like the first-person singular because I have to imitate accurately the voice of someone who is not like me. The third-person singular gives me an authority over a character.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Novels encourage empathy by allowing us to understand perspectives different from our own.
In this quote, Orhan Pamuk expresses the belief that novels serve a political purpose by helping readers empathize with individuals who possess different backgrounds or experiences. He highlights the significance of narrative perspective in storytelling, noting that using the first-person voice requires a deep engagement with the character’s unique identity, while the third-person perspective offers a level of distance and authority in character depiction.
Themes
NovelsEmpathyNarrativePerspectiveIdentity
In practice
Example use cases
During a literature class discussion about character development in novels.
More from Orhan Pamuk
All quotes →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.
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Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.
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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.
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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
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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.
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