I wrote 'My Name is Red' just to remember painting, where the hand does it before the intellect. When I'm captive to it, I'm a happier person. Kierkegaard tells us that a happy person is someone who lives in the present; the unhappy person, someone who lives either in the past or the future.

Istanbul is a vast place. There are very conservative neighbourhoods, there are places that are upper class, Westernised, consuming Western culture.

I have always thought that the place where you sleep or the place you share with your partner should be separate from the place where you write. The domestic rituals and details somehow kill the imagination. They kill the demon in me.

A museum should not just be a place for fancy paintings but should be a place where we can communicate our lives through our everyday objects.

Our works decay and disappear but God gentlest works stay looking down on the ruins we toil to rear.

Our socialism does not include extreme materialistic concepts, since Indonesia is primarily a God-fearing, God-loving nation. Our socialism is a mixture. We draw political equality from the American Declaration of Independence. We draw spiritual equality from Islam and Christianity. We draw scientific equality from Marx.

The limitless loving devotion to God, and the gift God makes of Himself to you, are the highest elevation of which the heart is capable; it is the highest degree of prayer. The souls that have reached this point are truly the heart of the Church.

God is a being who is himself the cause of his own existence. His prerogative is to perceive before there was anything to be perceived. He is the creator of the universe; He operated upon nothing and turned it into something.