Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back.

In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.

More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.

The story of your life is not your life; it's your story.

Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?

Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state.

Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.

History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant

Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes.

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable

I had wanted to compromise with Fate: to escape occasional great agonies by submitting to a whole life of privation and small pains.

Create a state of Bliss where everything is in perfect balance.

Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.

The fictive structure, my work, my imagination, my books are about the details, the huge construction about culture, Islamic culture or modern Turkey. They're all intertwined.

The nice thing about having relatives' kids around is that they go home.

Fluency avoids hard thoughts.

I think you should do rehearsal and work at it, but when the camera rolls, you should be ready. Try to make it good the first time.

You can either be a Host to God, or a Hostage to your ego!

The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.