I Will Never See the World Again Quotes

“You can imprison me but you cannot keep me here. Because, like all writers, I have magic. I can pass through your walls with ease.”
― Ahmet Altan, I Will Never See the World Again

“I was stuck in the corpse of a dead life.”
― Ahmet Altan, I Will Never See the World Again

“On one side of this reality was a body made of flesh, bone, blood, muscle and nerve that was trapped. On the other side was a mind that did not care about that body and made fun of what would happen to it, a mind that looked from above at what was happening and at what was yet to happen, that believed itself untouchable and that was, therefore, untouchable.”
― Ahmet Altan, I Will Never See the World Again

“I am a writer.
I am neither where I am nor where I am not.
Wherever you lock me up I will travel the world with the wings of my infinite mind.
Besides, I have friends all around the world who help me travel, most of whom I have never met.
Each eye that reads what I have written, each voice that repeats my name holds my hand like a little cloud and flies me over the lowlands, the springs, the forests, the seas, the towns and their streets. They host me quietly in their houses, in their halls, in their rooms.
I travel the whole world in a prison cell.
[…]
I am writing this in a prison cell.
But I am not in prison.
I am a writer.
I am neither where I am nor where I am not.
You can imprison me but you cannot keep me here.
Because, like all writers, I have a magic. I can pass through your walls with ease.”
― Ahmet Altan, I Will Never See the World Again

“By simply putting away the mirrors, they had erased us from life...”
― Ahmet Altan, I Will Never See the World Again

“The eternity of death has the power to trivialize even the most terrifying moments of life.”
― Ahmet Altan, I Will Never See the World Again

“The small runes on the paper came alive and gleamed as soon as you laid eyes on them; they metamorphosed from one shape to another, transforming themselves into unknown cities, narrow streets, steep rocks, deserts and palaces. They sprinkled you with drops of magic water and you too were transformed. You became Peter Pan, you became Le Chevalier de Pardaillan, you became Arsène Lupin, you became Sherlock Holmes, you became Ivanhoe, you became Lancelot.
I spent the years of my childhood playing with the wood spirits. I got used to having them always around me as they slept in between pages, ready to wake and start dancing as soon as I opened a book. I loved watching them even in their sleep.
One thing I found most difficult in prison was to live in a place where there were no books.”
― Ahmet Altan, I Will Never See the World Again

“In The Divine Comedy, Dante’s depiction of the Inferno is more intense and dramatic than his narrative on Paradise. Dante cannot help but imagine himself torturing the dwellers of hell. Here are the literary grounds for my suspicion that what we expect from God is not so much that he accept us into his heaven but that he send our enemies to hell.”
― Ahmet Altan, I Will Never See the World Again

“I am a writer.
I am neither where I am not where I am not.
Wherever you lock me up I will travel the world with the wings of my infinite mind.
Besides, I have friends all around the world who help me travel, most of whom I have never met.
Each eye that reads what I have written, each voice that repeats my name holds my hand like a little cloud and flies me over the lowlands, the springs, the forests, the seas, the towns and their streets. They host me quietly in their houses, in their halls, in their rooms.
I travel the whole world in a prison cell.
[…]
I am writing this in a prison cell.
But I am not in prison.
I am a writer.
I am neither where I am nor where I am not.
You can imprison me but you cannot keep me here.
Because, like all writers, I have a magic. I can pass through your walls with ease.”
― Ahmet Altan, I Will Never See the World Again

“Years ago, as I was wandering in that unmarked, enigmatic and hazy territory where literature touches life I had met my own destiny but failed to recognize it; I wrote thinking it belonged to someone else.”
― Ahmet Altan, I Will Never See the World Again

“I had surrounded and extinguished the fire of terror, which life had lit in a cage, with the fire of death.”
― Ahmet Altan, I Will Never See the World Again

“I believe ideas should not give birth to the novel, but the novel should give birth to ideas.”
― Ahmet Altan, Ich werde die Welt nie wiedersehen: Texte aus dem Gefängnis

“The act of writing harbors a magical paradox — it is something that you can take refuge and hide in while at the same time you are opening yourself up to the world and spreading out with your words.”
― Ahmet Altan, Ich werde die Welt nie wiedersehen: Texte aus dem Gefängnis

“I realized once more than when you are faced with a reality that you can turn your life upside down, that same sorry reality will sweep you away like a wild flood only if you submit to it and act as it expects you to.”
― Ahmet Altan, Ich werde die Welt nie wiedersehen: Texte aus dem Gefängnis