Orhan Pamuk

Ferit Orhan Pamuk (born June 7, 1952) is a Turkish novellist in the post-modern style. He became one of Turkey's most prominent novellists and was made a cause célèbre in 2005 when he was prosecuted for claiming that the mass killings of Armenians from 1915 were a result of genocide. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Quotes

 * The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.
 * "My Father's Suitcase", Nobel Prize for Literature lecture (December 7, 2006).


 * When another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free.
 * "Freedom to Write", Prague Writer's Festival (May 8, 2006).