Status Updates From Resimli İstanbul - Hatırala...

"I'd have liked to write my entire story this way-as if my life were something that happened to someone else, as if it were a dream in which I felt my voice fading and my will succumbing to enchantment...I cannot accept that the myths we tell about our first lives prepare us for the brighter, more authentic second lives that are meant to begin when we awake..that second life is none other than the book in your hand."

"It's a sensation as sweet as seeing ourselves in our dreams...Once imprinted in our minds, other people's reports of what we've done end up mattering more than what we ourselves remember. And just as we learn about our lives from others, so too do we let others shape our understanding of the city in which we live."

"...self-reflection leads us to examine the circumstances of our birth. Why were we born in this particular corner of the world, on this particular date? These families into which we were born, these countries and cities to which the lottery of life has assigned us--they expect love from us, and in the end do we love them from the bottom of our hearts; but did we perhaps deserve better?"

"Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness."