Citation (12)
Even if we venture bravely to paint like them, it’ll amount to the same thing, In the end, our methods will die out, our colors will fade. No one will care about our books and our paintings, and those who do express interest with a sneer, with no understanding whatsoever, why there’s no perspective—or else they won’t be able to find the manuscripts at all. Indifference, time, and disaster will destroy our art. The Arabian glue used in the bindings contains fish, honey and bone, and the pages are sized and polished with a finish made from egg white and starch. Greedy, shameless mice will nibble these pages away; termites, worms and a thousand varieties of insect will gnaw our manuscripts out of existence. Bindings will fall apart and pages will drop out. Women lighting their stoves, thieves, indifferent servants and children will thoughtlessly tear out the pages and pictures. Child princes will scrawl over the illustrations with toy pens. They’ll blacken people’s eyes, wipe their runny noses on the pages, doodle in the margins with black ink…
—Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red
‘I am your beloved Uncle,’ p. 171
(cf. 2001.83)
