“people were just out of control! . . . They've all got cell phones stuck to their ears and yet I've never seen such distance between people trying so hard to be close.”

“You are not a mere spectator at a contest between cancer cells and killer drugs. Your attitude is important. Your will to get healthy. People give up; sometimes it seems easier to die than hang in there, go the distance... You've got to be your own hero. People need to find things inside themselves they never knew were there.”

“This time was different. The tools of this era--phones, computers--enabled people to move at a blurring pace. Yet despite all they accomplished, they were never at peace.”

“People are so stupid. They think they've got the whole puzzle figured out, but they're really so far off.”

“I got out on the street and started crying the kind of hysterical tears made justifiable only by turning off one’s cell phone, putting it to the ear, and pretending to be told of a death in the family.”

“We're stuck. We're stuck between the East and the West. Between the past and the future. On the one hand there are the secular modernists, so proud of the regime they constructed, you cannot breathe a critical word. They've got the army and half of the state on their side. On the other hand there are the conventional traditionalist, so infatuated with the Ottoman past, you cannot breathe a critical word. They've got the general public and the remaining half of the state on their side.”