The Museum of Innocence Quotes

“Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“In fact no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it. It may well be that, in a moment of joy, one might sincerely believe that they are living that golden instant "now," even having lived such a moment before, but whatever they say, in one part of their hearts they still believe in the certainty of a happier moment to come. Because how could anyone, and particularly anyone who is still young, carry on with the belief that everything could only get worse: If a person is happy enough to think he has reached the happiest moment of his life, he will be hopeful enough to believe his future will be just as beautiful, more so.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Any intelligent person knows that life is a beautiful thing and that the purpose of life is to be happy," said my father as he watched the three beauties. "But it seems only idiots are ever happy. How can we explain this?”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“People only tell lies when there is something they are terribly frightened of losing.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“When we lose people we love, we should never disturb their souls, whether living or dead. Instead, we should find consolation in an object that reminds you of them, something...I don't know...even an earring”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Whatever anybody says, the most important thing in life is to be happy.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“She looked out the window; in her eyes was the light that you see only in children arriving at a new place, or in young people still open to new influences, still curious about the world because they have not yet been scarred by life.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“When two people love each other as we do, no one can come between them, no one," I said, amazed at the words I was uttering without preparation. "Lovers like us, because they know that nothing can destroy their love, even on the worst days, even when they are heedlessly hurting each other in the cruelest , most deceitful ways, still carry in their hearts a consolation that never abandons them." (p.191)”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“The gap between compassion and surrender is love’s darkest, deepest region.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“What is love?”
“I don’t know.”
“Love is the name given to the bond Kemal feels with Füsun whenever they travel along highways or sidewalks; visit houses, gardens, or rooms; or whenever he watches her sitting in tea gardens and restaurants, and at dinner tables.”
“Hmmm … that’s a lovely answer,~ But isn’t love what you feel when you can’t see me?”
“Under those circumstances, it becomes a terrible obsession, an illness.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“As always after drinking too much, I felt like my own ghost trying to take it's first solo walk outside the body.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“If we give what we treasure most to a Being we love with all our hearts, if we can do that without expecting anything in return, then the world becomes a beautiful place.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Happiness means being close to the one you love, that's all. (Taking immediate possession is not necessary.)”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“I realized that the longing for art, like the longing for love, is a malady that blinds us, and makes us forget the things we already know, obscuring reality.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Clocks and calendars do not exist to remind us of the Time we've forgotten but to regulate our relations with others and indeed all of society, and this is how we use them.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Let everyone know, I lived a very happy life.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“In poetically well built museums, formed from the heart's compulsions, we are consoled not by finding in them old objects that we love, but by losing all sense of Time.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Time had not faded my memories (as I had prayed to God it might), nor had it healed my wounds as it is said always to do. I began each day with the hope that the next day would be better, my recollections a little less pointed, but I would awake to the same pain, as if a black lamp were burning eternally inside me, radiating darkness.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“After all, isn't the purpose of the novel, or of a museum, for that matter, to relate our memories with such sincerity as to transform individual happiness into a happiness all can share?”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people behave. If you ask me, being cultured and civilized is not about everyone being free and equal; it's about everyone being refined enough to act as if they were. Then no one has to feel guilty.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“It's important, no doubt, to understand the person we love. If we cannot manage this, it's necessary, at least, to believe we understand them. I must confess that over the entire eight years I only rarely enjoyed the contentment of the second possibility, let alone the first.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Age had not made him less handsome, as is so often the case; it had simply made him less visible.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Sometimes I would see them not as mementos of the blissful hours but as the tangible precious debris of the storm raging in my soul.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“With the death of my father, it wasn't just the objects of everyday life that had changed; even the most ordinary street scenes had become irreplaceable mementos of a lost world whose every detail figured in the meaning of the whole.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Herkes bilsin, çok mutlu bir hayat yaşadım.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Hayatımın en mutlu anıymış, bilmiyordum.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“No one recognises the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it. It may well be that in a moment of joy, one might sincerely believe that they are living that golden instant 'now', even having lived such moments before, but whatever they say, in one part of their hearts they still believe that a happier moment to come. Because how could anyone, particularly anyone who is young, carry on with the belief that everything could only get worse: if a person is happy enough to think he has reached the happiest moment of his life, he will be hopeful enough to believe his future will be just as beautiful.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“En realidad nadie sabe que está viviendo el momento más feliz de su vida mientras lo vive.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“when we reach the point when our lives take on their final shape as in a novel we can identify our happiest moment selecting it in retrospective”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence