The challenge is to lend conviction even to the voices which advocate views I find personally abhorrent, whether they are political Islamists or officers justifying a coup.

Life can't be all that bad,' i'd think from time to time. 'Whatever happens, i can always take a long walk along the Bosphorus.

Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love?

Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. I never thought of it before: I'd been living luminously between two eternities of darkness.

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.

Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.

Life is beautiful if you are on the road to somewhere

For if a lover's face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home.

Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world.

To savour Istanbul's back streets, to appreciate the vines and trees that endow its ruins with accidental grace, you must, first and foremost, be a stranger to them.

After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy.

I think it is very good when people suffer. To me that is like the kiss of Jesus.

Without charm there can be no fine literature, as there can be no perfect flower without fragrance.

I'm incredibly grateful for Sophie Barthes, I'll always be incredibly grateful for her being generous enough to believe in what I thought. And it was just lucky that I met the right person.

All relationships have the same basic components: people, needs, and expectations.

God is not identified with the world, for he made it; but God is not separate from His world, either. For He made it.

Never fall out of love with life

The gift of life is so precious that we should feel an obligation to pay back the universe for the gift of being alive.

One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting.

The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.