Although everyone knew it was freedom from the laws of Islam, no one was quite sure what else westernization was good for.
–Orhan Pamuk
Istanbul (2006, p.10)
read 6-26-08
Archive for the ‘Literature’ Category
No One Was Quite Sure
Posted in East and West, Islam, Literature, Orhan Pamuk on July 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
So I’ve Been Told
Posted in Literature, Orhan Pamuk, memory on July 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I feel compelled to add or so I’ve been told. In Turkish we have a special tense that allows us to distinguish hearsay from what we’ve seen with our own eyes; when we are relating dreams, fairy tales, or past events we could not have witnessed, we use this tense. It is a useful distinction [...]
A New York Girl
Posted in Literature, O. Henry on January 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“There was a girl he had met at one of these studio contrivances– a glorious, impudent, lucid, open-minded girl with hair the color of Culmbacher, and a good-natured way of despising you. She was a New York girl.”
–O. Henry
The Plutonian Fire
A Far Better Thing
Posted in Charles Dickens, Literature, redemption, sacrifice on January 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
–Sydney Carton, as he is executed by the guillotine, sacrificing his once aimless life in place of his friend
Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities
