More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
That was the one thing about the rain that likened it to sorrow: You did your best to remain untouched, safe and dry, but if and when you failed, there came a point in which you started seeing the problem less in terms of drops than as an incessant gush, and thereby you decide you might as well get drenched.
How amazing was this ability to achieve plenty by achieving little, to go home empty-handed yet still satisfied at the end of the day!
Sanity was a promised land, the Shangri-la she had been deported from as a teenager, and to which she intended to return to one day.
Asya had decided she too was born in the soul of misery and was going to bring trouble wherever she went.
love loves power. That is why we can suicidally fall in love with others but can rarely reciprocate the love of those suicidally in love with us.
Western politicians presume there is a cultural gap between Eastern Civilization and Western Civilization. If it were that simple! The real civilization gap is between the Turks and the Turks. We are a bunch of cultured urbanites surrounded by hillbillies and bumpkins on all sides.
“You see, unlike in the movies, there is no THE END sign flashing at the end of books. When I’ve read a book, I don’t feel like I’ve finished anything. So I start a new one.”
Imagination was a dangerously captivating magic for those compelled to be realistic in life, and words could be poisonous for those destined always to be silenced.
“You and the Republic have arrived in this city together. I was desperately waiting for both of you,”
we should all line up along the Bosphorus Bridge and puff as hard as we can to shove this city in the direction of the West. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try the other way, see if we can veer to the East.” He chuckled. “It’s no good to be in between. International politics does not appreciate ambiguity.”
You have a bottomless potential for demolition.”
The past is nothing but a shackle we need to get rid of.
“Yeah, but then some time ago I got hooked on Johnny Cash. And that was it. Ever since then I stopped listening to anything else. I like Cash. He depresses me so deeply, I am not depressed anymore.”
The past is another country for the Turks.
The soul needs to shiver to wake up,
“They square perfectly,” Asya remarked. “Johnny Cash and existential philosophy, they both probe the human soul to see what’s inside, and unhappy with their findings, they both leave it open!”
They acted and talked as if no matter what they said or how they said it, one could not really fully express the innermost self and, in the end, language was only a reeking carcass of hollow words long rotten inside.
Nationalism was no more than a replenishment of oppressors. Instead of being oppressed by someone of a different ethnicity, you ended up being oppressed by someone of your own.
Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.
Was it really better for human beings to discover more of their past? And then more and more …? Or was it simply better to know as little of the past as possible and even to forget what small amount was remembered?
it is early enough to harbor hopes of realizing one’s dreams but far too late to actually dream,
The oppressor has no use for the past. The oppressed has nothing but the past,
Perhaps somewhere in her luminous universe there was room for darkness, dirt, and deviance.
