Even though the charges were dropped on January 22, 2006, his Nobel Prize reception continues to provoke mixed feelings of pride and anger among Turks. On the other hand, as Pamuk intended, the criminal case brought international attention to freedom of speech in Turkey. In his Nobel speech, he defined literature as:  ... what a person creates when he shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and retires to a corner to express his thoughts - that is, the meaning of literature... When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end, with this gesture he suggests a single humanity, a world without a centre.
When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end people might whisper about him