Orhan's Inheritance Quotes

“We are all sorry for something. It's what makes us human, says Seda. But sometimes empathy is not enough. Sometimes empathy needs to be followed by action.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“Silence is the enemy of justice.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“And I'm not ashamed or regretful. I spent my days loving those who mattered to me. What else is there in life?”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“Everything we do is political," she says. "Even the things we choose not to do.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“There, in the spaces between darkness and light, a sadness hangs in the air, invisible to the human eye yet heavy on the heart.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“Time and progress are two long-lost relatives who send an occasional letter.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“There’s no dignity in this place, thinks Seda. No privacy either. Some fool is always poking his or her head into your doorway. And as if the residents and nurses aren’t bad enough, lately all kinds of people keep showing up, waving their tape recorders in her face, asking her questions about the past. Everyone is an amateur historian. They use words like witness and genocide, trying to bridge the gap between her past and their own present with words. She wants nothing to do with it. But the other residents have fallen under a confessional spell. They’re like ancient tea bags steeping in the murky waters of the past, repeating their stories over and over again to anyone who will listen. Who can blame them? Driven from their homes not by soldiers this time, but by their own loved ones, to this place so cleverly labeled “home,” a second exile. In some ways, Seda thinks it’s worse than the first: to the lexicon of horrific memories is added the immense shame of surviving, of living when so many others did not. Yet they all bask in their rediscovered relevance. But all the words in every human language on earth would not be enough to describe what”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“Where is your Christian god now?” the turbaned assassin shouts. Lucine thinks it is a good question. Not one person answers him. Not Mairig and not the missionary. Perhaps they sense what Lucine already knows, that if God is indeed anywhere, he is not here.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“It is the first time she has witnessed a murder.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“Do good and throw it into the sea,’” he says. “If the fish don’t know it, God will,” she says, finishing for him. “Iyilik yap denize at, balık bilmezse Halik bilir,” he repeats in Turkish.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“art is always intense when it’s transformative.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“if you paid enough attention to your past, it would grow and grow, obscure your present as well as your future.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“Orhan fixates on the word genocide. Massacres abound in his country's history, as they do in any nation's history. But genocide is a different accusation altogether. Why do they insist on using that word?”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“Because it happened. Remembering it is all we have in the face of denial. Silence is the enemy of justice,”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“but you know what happened when they started selling minds in the market?” “What are you talking about?” asks Orhan. “There were no sales. Everyone liked his own mind.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“Already the raki is drifting up from his belly, past his heart, his throat, up all the way to the top of his head, where, if he closes his eyes, he can follow its ethereal dance.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“On that day, I suddenly understood that buried deep in the stories of nations were the voices of real people facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“A cup of coffee commits one to forty years of friendship,” she says, reciting the proverb in Turkish.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“A volte, c'è più tra le parole che dentro di esse.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Raccontami dei fiori di gelso

“Quello che importa non è ciò che il mondo ti fa, ma come reagisci tu.”
― Aline Ohanesian, Raccontami dei fiori di gelso

“Quello che importa non è ciò che il mondo ti fa, ma come reagisci tu”
― Aline Ohanesian, Raccontami dei fiori di gelso

“disappears”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“stories”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“tragedy: Micheline Marcom’s Three Apples Fell from Heaven, Carol Edgarian’s Rise the Euphrates, Nancy Kricorian’s Zabelle, Peter Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate, Margaret Ahnert’s The Knock at the Door, and Mark Mustain’s The Gendarme,”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“their”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance

“Pilgrimage to”
― Aline Ohanesian, Orhan's Inheritance