"I saw the way he lived; he was really and truly poor! In one of his rooms was a woven rug and a few cloth prayer-mats. And the other was completely bare. If the well-to-do people in the town brought him anything, he would most kindly and graciously refuse it. He did not want to offend anyone. He absolutely would not take anything or eat anything without giving something in return. He really lived what he wrote. What he spoke about was all the Risale-i Nur. The way he acted was like a repetition of what it teaches... "
Abdullah Yegin notes also another side of Bediuzzaman's character, his refusal to compromise his beliefs in any way in the face of threat or tyranny, which was a powerful source of strength and inspiration for others in those dark days:
"Like his speech, Ustad's manner was unique, and everyone used to look at him in amazement. For his dress, his manner, and his actions resembled no one else's... I'll never forget the way in that time of repression when the police and gendarmes were much feared, Ustad walking towards the Governor’s residence escorted by the police with firm and resolute steps in exactly the same dress he had always worn and the way the onlookers stared at him in wonder, a shiver passing over the crowd watching him..."

• Ports of the Risale-i Nur Written in Kastamonu

Between his arrival in Kastamonu in March 1936 and probably 1940 Bediuzzaman wrote from the Third to the Ninth Rays inclusive . Of these, the Seventh Ray, The Supreme Sign, was written in Ramazan of 1938 or 39. It was followed immediately by the Eighth Ray, and the summary of the Arabic twenty-ninth Flash, Hizbü'I-Ekber-i Nuri. Bediuzzaman sent numerous letters to his students in Isparta, and also while in Kastamonu, he did the final drafts of the First and Second Rays, which had been written in Eskisehir Prison. The second part of the Index, which included