Belkis would naturally be a public person, like all disaster-stricken people. Maybe the beauty of Belkıs, which could never become natural, would fade for a few days in this generality (…) Just like poverty, mourning would make everyone equal to each other. (MİTHAT CEMAL KUNTAY / Three Istanbul)
***
The road was never ending. He remembered the words of the Ethiopian sage he met on a trip to Africa forty years ago: “Love is the work of great hikers.” Now he realized how true that statement was. He was walking towards the lover, and each step consumed him like a supernatural disaster. (Amelie NOTHOMB / Mercury)
***
I knew you wouldn’t mind. When I thought, “Isn’t this what I want, I couldn’t say yes, I knew that those who don’t worry will cause trouble.” (SULE GURBUZ / Dying with Enthusiasm)
***
Cigdem was stubborn. He also asked his thousandth question: “Do you think there is no such thing as happiness?” “No,” I said; “Those who say there is are those who fail to realize that what they think is happiness is an unhappiness that they are satisfied with.” (MEHMET EROGLU / DREAMS)
***
He thought then that people only seek the misfortune of others, just to hear their own happiness.REFIK HALIT KARAY / Hometown Stories)
***
Time passes and those little age differences wear off. In the end, we all belong to the same category; to the category of non-young people… (JULIAN BARNES / A Sense of End)
***
And a secret was not something we revealed, it was something that was revealed when the owner of the secret himself wanted it. (ŞÜKRAN YİĞİT / A Winter Journey)
***
We forgave each other for things we couldn’t be. What more can one expect in this land of suffering and tears? (JOHN BANVILLE / Sea)
***
Any movement is inevitably towards death, and time is in the service of death. (JG BALLARD / Crystal World)
(NOTE: 2022 was spent with intensive non-literary readings for me. Especially it took a long time to come to terms with the wreckage left by neoliberalism… They are not here, because I always include quotations from literary products here. I preferred re-readings in that area. It was exciting to read the novels To Die With Joy again. In fact, it was as if I had read Die with Joy for the first time.)
.