Michael

“After I made it my business to find out how much money people have been squandering on these frivolous and insanely ostentatious fireworks displays we’ve seen in every corner of Istanbul every night this summer, I had to ask myself if the people celebrating at those weddings might not have been happier—bearing in mind that we are now a city of ten million people—if the money had been spent on educating the children of the poor. Am I right or wrong [1997]? Especially”
― Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul

“Whenever I think of these writers together, I am reminded that what gives a city its special character is not just its topography or its buildings but rather the sum total of every chance encounter, every memory, letter, color, and image jostling in its inhabitants’ crowded memories after they have been living, like me, on the same streets for fifty years.”
― Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul

“the hüzün the boy has carried with him since birth will lead the story into melodrama.”
― Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City

“To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers. When I say, therefore, that Mycroft has better powers of observation than I, you may take it that I am speaking the exact and literal truth.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: The Ultimate Collection