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In actuality, we don’t look for smiles in pictures of bliss, but rather, for the happiness in life itself. Painters know this, but this is precisely what they cannot depict. That’s why they substitute the joy of seeing for the joy of life.

— Orhan Pamuk My Name Is Red (1998)

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More quotes by Orhan Pamuk

Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. I never thought of it before: I'd been living luminously between two eternities of darkness.

My Name Is Red (1998)

For if a lover's face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home.

My Name Is Red (1998)

All great masters, in their work, seek that profound void within color and outside time.

My Name Is Red (1998)

Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love?

My Name Is Red (1998)

I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well.

My Name Is Red (1998)

All Orhan Pamuk quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Orhan Pamuk (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.