“The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life”

“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.”

“We had no desire to live in Istanbul, nor in Paris or New York. Let them have their discos and dollars, their skycrapers and supersonics transports. Let them have their radios and their color TV, hey, we have ours, don't we? But we have something they don't have. Heart. We have heart. Look, look how the light of life seeps into my very heart”

“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.”

“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.”

“With the engine stalled, we would notice the deep silence reigning in the park around us, in the summer villa before us, in the world everywhere. We would listen enchanted to the whirring of an insect beginning vernal flight before the onset of spring, and we would know what a wondrous thing it was to be alive in a park on a spring day in Istanbul.”

“Ka found it very soothing: for the first time in years, he felt part of a family. In spite of the trials and responsibilities of what was called 'family', he saw now the joys of its unyielding togetherness, and was sorry not to have known more of it in his life.”