mehmet > mehmet's Quotes

“I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“It was like the classic scene in the movies where one lover is on the train and one is on the platform and the train starts to pull away, and the lover on the platform begins to trot along and then jog and then sprint and then gives up altogether as the train speeds irrevocably off. Except in this case I was all the parts: I was the lover on the platform, I was the lover on the train. And I was also the train.”
― Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs

“Love is the answer, said the songs, and that's OK. It was OK, I supposed, as an answer. But no more than that. It was not a solution; it wasn't really even an answer, just a reply.”
― Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box

“As if I feared that the scope of what I could feel and imagine was being quietly limited by the world within a world, the internet. The things outside of the web were becoming further from me, and everything inside it seemed piercingly relevant. The blogs of strangers had to be read daily, and people nearby who had no web presence were becoming almost cartoonlike, as if they were missing a dimension.

It was just happening, like time, like geography. The web seemed so inherently endless that it didn't occur to me what wasn't there. My appetite for pictures and videos and news and music was so gigantic now that if something was shrinking, something immesurable, how would I notice?

...Most of life is offline, and I think it always will be; eating and aching and sleeping and loving happen in the body. But it's not impossible to imagine loosing my appetite for those things; they aren't always easy, and they take so much time.”
― Miranda July, It Chooses You

“The funny thing about my procrastination was that I was almost done with the screenplay. I was like a person who had fought dragons and lost limbs and crawled through swamps and now, finally, the castle was visible. I could see tiny children waving flags on the balcony; all I had to do was walk across a field to get to them. But all of a sudden I was very, very sleepy. And the children couldn't believe their eyes as I folded down to my knees and fell to the ground face-first, with my eyes open. Motionless, I watched ants hurry in and out of a hole and I knew that standing up again would be a thousand times harder than the dragon or the swamp and so I did not even try. I just clicked on one thing after another after another.”
― Miranda July, It Chooses You

“I nodded, pretending I was relaxed. I watched the sunlight sparkling on the water and practiced mind-body integration for a few seconds by quietly hyperventilating.”
― Miranda July, It Chooses You

“In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

“Every letter was a love letter.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

“Like most music that affects me deeply, I would never listen to it while others were around, just as I would not pass on a book that I especially loved to another. I am embarrassed to admit this, knowing that it reveals some essential lack or selfishness in my nature, and aware that it runs contrary to the instincts of most, whose passion for something leads them to want to share it, to ignite a similar passion in others, and that without the benefit of such enthusiasm I would still be ignorant of many of the books and much of the music I love most... But rather than an expansion, I've always felt a diminishment of my own pleasure when I've invited someone else to take part in it, a rupture in the intimacy I felt with the work, an invasion of privacy. It is worst when someone else picks up the copy of a book I've just been enthralled by and begins casually to thumb through the pages.”
― Nicole Krauss, Great House

“We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, like, say, masturbatory habits (for me, about once a day, usually in the shower), we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our pasts and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself. But it's just the opposite, more is more is more—more bleeding, more giving. These things, details, stories, whatever, are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see. What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin? He leaves it where he molts. Hours, days or months later, we come across a snake's long-shed skin and we know something of the snake, we know that it's of this approximate girth and that approximate length, but we know very little else. Do we know where the snake is now? What the snake is thinking now? No. By now the snake could be wearing fur; the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi. The skin is no longer his, he wore it because it grew from him, but then it dried and slipped off and he and everyone could look at it.”
― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This does not break me.”
― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“Why do you want to be on The Real World?
-Because I want everyone to witness my youth

Why?
-Isn't it gorgeous?”
― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“The secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don't know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Potential has a shelf life.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

“Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

“When I am lonely for boys it’s their bodies I miss. I study their hands lifting the cigarettes in the darkness of the movie theaters, the slope of a shoulder, the angle of a hip. Looking at them sideways, I examine them in different lights. My love for them is visual: that is the part of them I would like to possess. Don’t move, I think. Stay like that, let me have that.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“renkli balıkların şımarıklığından geçip, küçük balıkların
doğuştan şaşkınlığından, yosunların yılışıklığından;
kurbağa yavrularının gayretine hayranlıkla ve su yılanlarının
kaçısına minnettarlıkla, vardım suyun kuytu sığınağına.
akıntının mahmurlaştığı yuvasına. yarı uykulu,
dalgın bu tabakada
rastladım suyun başlangıcından beri orada olan
bir balığa.

dokunmadım hiç bu balığa.

dokunulamaz balıklara. çünkü tutabilmek için bir balığı, gövdesini sıkıştırmalı.
gövdesi tutulan balıkların
çabucak kesilir soluğu.
körpe ve iyi niyetli olsa da, çırpınarak kovar balık,
kendi için açılmış her avucu.
balık, ancak bakarak bilenlerin,
görmekle yetinenlerin dostu.

durduk balıkla yan yana.

ancak yan yana durulabilir bir balıkla.
karşısına geçip telaşını durdurmaya çalışacağına...
arkasına geçip kuyruğunun dalgasında hırpalanacağına..
üstünde altında dolaşıp balığı şaşırtacağına..
sadece yan yana durulabilir bir balıkla.
böylece bakabilirsin balığın neye baktığına.

....

ben de baktım balığın baktıklarına.

durdurup zihnimin işleyişini iyice, çalıştım aklımı
saydam kılmaya. söyleyecek sözüm kalmayacaktı
az daha. biraz daha dursam böyle
kalakacaktım balıksı bir zamanda.
yumuşaktı doğrusu, akıl dönüşüyordu suya.
kendini diyemeyecek kadar duraksız bir akışta.

derken bir kaplumbağa böldü duruşumuzu.

...

balık baktı bana. sonra kaplumbağaya. şaşarak bir aklın
bu kadar etten olmasına ve bir gövdenin
zamanın bütün yaralarını taşımasına.

balık unuttu anladığını, suyla birlikte aktı.
daha biraz önce burada, bir şey anlamaktaydı.
anlamın kendi gelmeden anladığından uzaklaştı.

yeterince sudan biri olamadığımdan belki,
su için fazla dilli,
kaplumbağa beni suyun ötesine doğru çekti.
aklım yeniden ete döndü. nihayetinde ben insandım,
balık olup akamadım.
tastamam kendimden ibaret olamadım.

giderek hızlanarak ve suyun boğuk gürültüsüne kapılarak...”
― Ece Temelkuran, Kıyı Kitabı

“İyi şeyler birdenbire olur; bu kadar bekletmez insanı. Sürüncemede kalan heyecanlardan ancak kötü şeyler çıkar. Ya da hiçbir şey çıkmaz.”
― Oğuz Atay, Korkuyu Beklerken

“Ne zaman içime biraz fazla baksam, yükseklik korkum depreşir”
― Murathan Mungan, Üç Aynalı Kırk Oda

“All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life—where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.”
― Miranda July, It Chooses You

“It was an act of devotion. A little like writing or loving someone — it doesn’t always feel worthwhile, but not giving up somehow creates unexpected meaning over time.”
― Miranda July, It Chooses You

“Most of life is offline, and I think it always will be; eating and aching and sleeping and loving happen in the body. But it's not impossible to imagine losing my appetite for those things; they aren't always easy, and they take so much time. In twenty years I'd be interviewing air and water and heat just to remember they mattered.”
― Miranda July, It Chooses You

“The male frog in mating season," said Crake, "makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs—it's been documented—discover if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier and the small frog appears much larger than it really is."
So?"
So that's what art is for the artist, an empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake