أزبــكيـة

The Red-Haired Woman Orhan Pamuk    I had wanted to be a writer. But after the events I am about to describe, I studied engineering geology and became a building contractor.     I felt as if every star was a thought, a moment, a fact, a memory of mine. You could see them together, but it was impossible to conceive of them all at once. It was the same way the words in my head couldn't keep up with my dreams. My emotions moved too far for words to do them justice.     Emotions, then, were more like pictures, like the gleaming sky before me. I could feel the whole of creation, but it was harder to think about. That was why I wanted to be a writer. I would contemplate all the images and emotions I couldn't express and finally put them into words.     Sometime after midnight I woke up with a start. Master Mahmut wasn't in the tent. I walked warily into the black night. It seemed the whole world was empty, and I was the last living thing ...

Other Colors Orhan Pamuk I have come to see the work of literature less as narrating the world than "seeing the world with words". From the moments he begins to use words like colors in a painting, a writer can begin to see how wondrous and surprising the world is, and he breaks the bones of language to find his own voice. For this he needs paper, a pen, and the optimism of a child looking at the world for the first time I have always believed there to be a greedy and almost implacable graphomaniac inside me - a creature who can never write enough, who is forever setting life in words- and that to make him happy I need to keep writing. But when I was putting this book together, I discovered that the graphomaniac would be much happier, and less pained by his writing illness, if he worked with an editor who gave his writings a center, a frame, and a meaning. I would like the sensitive reader to pay as much attention to my creative editing as to the effort I pu...