Istanbul Quotes

If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.

If the Earth were a single state, Istanbul would be its capital.

Either I conquer Istanbul or Istanbul conquers me.

Istanbul ... the constant beating of the wave of the East against the rock of the West.

İstanbul is a magical seal which unites Europe and Asia since the ancient times. Without a doubt, Istanbul is certainly the most beautiful place of the world.

Life can't be all that bad,' i'd think from time to time. 'Whatever happens, i can always take a long walk along the Bosphorus.

On the meeting point of two worlds, the ornament of Turkish homeland, the treasure of Turkish history, the city cherished by the Turkish nation, İstanbul, has its place in the hearts of all citizens.

If they say "you have your last chance to look at the world", I wish that look would from Çamlıca of Istanbul.

Holy Istanbul! Your name is the most enchanting one of all names which enchants me.

Istanbul is inspiring because it has its own code of architecture, literature, poetry, music.

The terrorists who committed the 2003 Istanbul attacks were locals, that is, Turks. And when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in the Netherlands last year, the murderer and his supporters were also part of the Muslim community.

Istanbul owes its extraordinary situation to Golden Horn, Marmara Sea and The Bosphorus.

I found that the loudest fans in the world are in Istanbul.

To savour Istanbul's back streets, to appreciate the vines and trees that endow its ruins with accidental grace, you must, first and foremost, be a stranger to them.

In Istanbul I met a man who said he knew beyond a doubt that God was a cat. I asked why he was so sure, and the man said, "When I pray to him, he ignores me."

The first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots; the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.

The kind of power mothers have is enormous. Take the skyline of Istanbul - enormous breasts, pathetic little willies, a final revenge on Islam. I was so scared I had to crouch in the bottom of the boat when I saw it.

So far I had been travelling alone with my handbook and my Western Railway timetable: I was happiest finding my own way and did not require a liaison man. It had been my intention to stay on the train, without bothering about arriving anywhere: sight-seeing was a way of passing the time, but, as I had concluded in Istanbul, it was an activity very largely based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled.

I went to Istanbul. I spoke to blind people, most of whom had lost their sight suddenly. I asked them to describe the last thing they saw.

A man went to Istanbul, his first visit there. On his way to a business meeting, this man lost his way. He began raging at himself for getting lost, until a realization allowed him to transcend his ire. "How can I be lost? I've never been here before?" pp 104-105

He was one of the masters of the thriller and he really was one of the great signposts, because he took the spy thriller out of the gentility of the drawing room and into the back streets of Istanbul and where it all really happened, ... The Day of the Jackal.

So you set out to travel to Rome... and end up in Istanbul. You set off for Japan... and you end up on a train across Siberia. The journey, not the destination, becomes a source of wonder.

It was in Cihangir that i first learned Istanbul was not an anonymous multitude of walled-in lives - a jungle of apartments where no one knew who was dead or who was celebrating what - but an archipelago of neighbourhoods in which everyone knew each other.

The kind of power mothers have is enormous.

National consciousness is truly a miraculous thing. When I am not in Turkey I feel even more Turkish than in Istanbul. But when I'm home my European side becomes more apparent.