Real Estate

we do not have to conform to the way our life has been written for us, especially by those who are less imaginative than ourselves.

That night, in the deep heat of Greece, devoured by mosquitoes and reminiscences, I was thinking about all the doors I had closed in my life and what it would have taken to keep them ajar.

The story in this book was about a woman who has gifted her life to a man. This is not something to be tried at home but it is usually where it happens.

In fact I would be content to live in a humble wooden cabin on the edge of an ocean or a lake, but somehow I looked down on myself for not having a bigger dream.

It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.

It seemed that acquiring a house was not the same thing as acquiring a home. And connected to home was a question I swatted away every time it landed too near me. Who else was living with me in the grand old house with the pomegranate tree? Was I alone with the melancholy fountain for company? No. There was definitely someone else there with me, perhaps even cooling their feet in that fountain. Who was this person? A phantom.

I was also searching for a house in which I could live and work and make a world at my own pace, but even in my imagination this home was blurred, undefined, not real, or not realistic, or lacked realism.

Bengali philosopher, poet and composer Rabindranath Tagore: It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.

Can we accept that language is sacred and scared and it's scarred as well, because that's how we all are?

Perhaps the secret cost of true love is that it has to be free to fly away. And to return.

Each new journey is a mourning for what has been left behind. The wanderer sometimes tries to recreate what has been left behind, in a new place.

The house with the pomegranate tree was my major acquisition. In this sense, I owned some unreal estate. The odd thing was that every time I tried to see myself inside this grand old house, I felt sad. It was as if the search for home was the point, and now that I had acquired it and the chase was over, there were no more branches to put in the fire.

I was thinking of Hecate at the crossroads with her burning torches and keys, Medusa with her snakes and fatal gaze, Artemis with her hunting dogs and deer, Aphrodite with her doves, Demeter with her mares, Athena with her owl. Whenever I saw eccentric and sometimes mentally fragile older women feeding pigeons on the pavement of every city in the world, I thought, Yes, there she is, she is one of those cut-down goddesses who has become demented by life.

I supposed that what I most value are real human relations and imagination. It is possible we cannot have one without the other.

Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it.

there was an eternal summer inside me, even when a storm was threatening to topple my building.

Ev mekânı, eğer toplumsal olarak kadınlara dayatılan bir şey değilse, ataerkil düzen tarafından üstümüze boca edilen bir ıstırap değilse, güçlü bir mekân olabilir. Zor olan, bu mekânın kadınlar ve çocuklar için iş görmesini sağlamak. Aslında bu bir ev mekânı mı yoksa yalnızca bir yaşam mekânı mı? Eğer bir yaşam mekânıysa da, o zaman kimsenin hayatı bir diğerinden daha değerli değil, kimse o mekânın çoğunu kaplayamaz ya da ruh halini her odaya saçamaz ya da diğerlerini sindiremez. Bana öyle geliyor ki ev mekânının bir cinsiyeti var ve bir yaşam mekânı daha akışkan. Bir daha asla heteroseksüel çiftlerle aynı masada oturup kadınların mekânı ödünç aldığını hissetmek istemiyordum. Böyle olduğu zaman erkekler ev sahibi, kadınlar da kiracı oluyor.

É difícil reivindicar fragilidade e força em igual proporção, mas é essa mistura que nos constitui a todos

A história neste livro era sobre uma mulher que oferece a sua vida a um homem. Não se deve tentar isso em casa, mas é normalmente aí que acontece.

In her view, this is because a man’s love of a woman is not what gives him his self-worth. I was no longer interested in exploring this kind of dynamic in

Sometimes I would sprinkle sea salt on a wedge sour green tomato and dip it into the peppery emerald olive oil. It was as if I had struck on something good that was within my reach.

In Western European realist fiction, what is a writer going to do (we wondered out loud) with the irrational, with synchronicities, with superstition and the private magic we invent to keep us out of harm’s way, with the uncanny, with thought streams and digressions that contradict our attempt to fix the story?

One of these men told me at a book festival that if he did not transgress too many boundaries in his marriage, there would always be a comforting pair of slippers warming for him by the fire...Will there ever be a comforting pair of slippers (pink, feathered) warming for me by the egg-shaped fireplace? Not unless I became a female character in a vintage Hollywood movie and paid a housekeeper to put them there.

A life without swimming every day was not a life I wanted.

The photographer asked us all to assemble for a photograph by the hotel pool and then he told us to do a thumbs-up gesture. I did not feel this was the right look for me. Its association with the popular gesture of male authoritarian leaders parading their erect white thumbs for the world’s media was not something I wanted to imitate.

Well, how about a female character who exists like that?’ I had recently suggested to three film executives, two of them women. They all looked a bit strained but leaned forward to hear more. I noted the way they leaned forward and hoped I was on the brink of finally selling them a script. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she follows all her desires, every single one of them. She is ruthless in pursuit of her vocation, takes up every job offer while her family pine for her. Furthermore,’ I said, ‘she has many affairs with people she will never fully commit to and she always buys her children thoughtless, last-minute presents at the airport when she returns from her exciting travels.’ The kindest female executive laughed. She looked exhausted. There were dark rings under her eyes. Perhaps I was exhausting her. Perhaps her family were exhausting her.

In this sense, my books are my real estate. They are not private property. There are no fierce dogs or security guards at the gate and there are no signs forbidding anyone to dive, splash, kiss, fail, feel fury or fear or be tender or tearful, to fall in love with the wrong person, go mad, become famous or play on the grass.