Turkey Quotes

If there is no love between the author and the story, there is no love between the reader and the story.
If you are a writer from Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, you don't have the luxury of being apolitical. You can't say, 'That's politics. I'm just doing my work.'
It is tiring to be Turkish. The country is badly polarised, bitterly politicized. Every writer, journalist, poet knows that because of an article, a novel, an interview, a poem or a tweet you can be sued, put on trial, even arrested. Self-censorship is widespread.
My readers are surprisingly mixed. I have conservative readers - for instance, women with headscarves - but also many liberal, leftist, feminist, nihilist, environmentalist, and secularist readers. Next to those are mystics, agnostics, Kurds, Turks, Alevis, Sunnis, gays, housewives, and businesswomen.
Part of me always felt like the other, the outsider, the observer. My father had two sons with his second wife, who I didn't meet until my late 20s. I was always on the periphery. In Madrid, I was the only Turk in a very international school, so I had to start thinking about identity. All these things affected me.
Politicians and leaders who see the media as 'the enemy within' divide society into two clashing cultural camps. Populist demagogues benefit from binary oppositions.
The lack of trust in supranational entities and cosmopolitan elite creates a fertile ground for tribalist belongings and reactionary politics.
The only way to learn writing is by writing. Talent, as charming as it sounds, amounts to no more than 12 per cent of the process. Work is 80 per cent. The remaining 8 per cent is 'luck' or 'zeitgeist' - in short, things that are not in our hands.
There are two different ways of writing a novel. The first I call the traditional father way, when the novelist slightly situates himself or herself above the text and knows what each and every character is going to do. It's a bit like engineering. I've never felt close to that tradition. I like the second way, which relies a bit more on intuition.
Turkey is a complex country. Most readers are women, of all generations, and they are passionate about books. However, the written culture is mostly patriarchal. In general, men write; women read. I would like to see this pattern changing. More women should write novels, poems, plays, and hopefully, more men will read fiction.
We need a dose of doubt and a dose of faith, to challenge each other.
When I looked at people like Goya and Pina Bausch, the message I got was just do what you're passionate about. Don't think about what other people are going to say or how they're going to receive your work. Just be your work.
When I was 10 years old, we moved to Spain with my mother. I learned Spanish before I learned English. But the English language stayed with me.
When societies go backwards and slide into authoritarianism, nationalism, and tribalism, machismo and sexism are also emboldened.
With 'The Forty Rules of Love,' I wanted to write a love story. But I wanted a love story with a spiritual dimension. For me, that took me to Rumi. And from Rumi, I went to Shams of Tabriz. That's how the story took shape.
Writing in another language gives me an additional freedom, an additional way of thinking. It's a challenge, but I like the challenge.
Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability.
'Zero problems with neighbors' is a value. But another equally important value is to establish peace.
An ordinary Turk, an ordinary Arab, an ordinary Tunisian can change history. We believe that democracy is good, and that our people deserve it.
As an academic, this was not the lifestyle I had planned for myself. Now I see myself everywhere.
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AuthorName
Al Yankovic
Profession
Comedian
BirthDate
23 October, 1959
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