Elif Shafak Quotes

Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.

~ Elif Shafak

How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.

~ Elif Shafak

Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighbourhood of despair.Even when all doors remain closed, God wil open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all that has been denied.

~ Elif Shafak

İnsanoğlu nedense anlayamadığı şeylere kötülemeye meyilli.

~ Elif Shafak

Her maktul katilinde yaşamaya devam eder.

~ Elif Shafak

If a stone hits a river, the river will treat it as yet another commotion in its already tumultuous course. Nothing unusual. Nothing unmanageable. If a stone hits a lake, however, the lake will never be the same again.

~ Elif Shafak

There was so much filth to clean up; so many broken pieces to fix; so many errors to correct. Every morning she left her house she let out a quiet sigh, as if in one breath she could will away detritus of the previous day.--Three Daughters of Eve

~ Elif Shafak

...for love loves power. That is why we can suicidally fall in love with others but can rarely reciprocate the love of those suicidally in love with us.

~ Elif Shafak

Every winner is inclined to think he will be triumphant forever. Every loser tends to fear that he is going to be beaten forever. But both are wrong for the same reason: Everything changes except the face of god.

~ Elif Shafak

Because time is a drop in the ocean, and you cannot measure off one drop against another to see which one is bigger, which one is smaller.

~ Elif Shafak

You see, unlike in the movies, there is no THE END sign flashing at the end of books. When I've read a book, I don't feel like I've finished anything. So I start a new one.

~ Elif Shafak

May love always be with you, and you always surrounded by love

~ Elif Shafak

It is so demanding to be born into a house full of women, where everyone loves you so overwhelmingly that they end up suffocating with their love; a house where you, as the only child, have to be more mature than all the adults around....But the problem is that they want me to become everything they themselves couldn't accomplish in life.....As a result, I had to work my butt off to fulfill all their dreams at the same time.

~ Elif Shafak

Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That's the hardest part and that's what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.

~ Elif Shafak

My interest in Sufism began when I was a college student. At the time, I was a rebellious young woman who liked to wrap several shawls of ‘-isms’ around her shoulders: I was a leftist, feminist, nihilist, environmentalist, anarcho-pacifist…I wasn’t interested in any religion and the difference between ‘religiosity’ and ‘spirituality’ was lost to me. Having spent some time of my childhood with a loving grandmother with many superstitions and beliefs, I had a sense the world was not composed of solely material things and there was more to life than I could see. But the truth is, I wasn’t interested in understanding the world. I only wanted to change it.

~ Elif Shafak

Every book is a journey, a map into the complexities of the human mind and soul.

~ Elif Shafak

Some among the Armenians in the diaspora would never want the Turks to recognize the genocide. If they do so, they'll pull the rug out from under our feet and take the strongest bond that unites us. Just like the Turks have been in the habit of denying their wrongdoing, the Armenians have been in the habit of savoring the cocoon of victim hood. Apparently, there are some old habits that need to be changes on both sides. Baron Baghdassarian

~ Elif Shafak

Loneliness was an inseparable part of being human.

~ Elif Shafak

Father, I am from a different egg than your other children. Think of me as a duckling raised by hens. I am not a domestic bird destined to spend his life in a chicken coop. The water that scares you rejuvenates me. For unlike you I can swim, and swim I shall. The ocean is my homeland. If you are with me, come to the ocean. If not, stop interfering with me and go back to the chicken coop.

~ Elif Shafak

Ironically, [living in] communities of the like - minded is one of the greatest dangers of today ́s globalized world. And it ́s happening everywhere, among liberals and conservatives, agnostics and believers, the rich and the poor, East and West alike. We tend to form clusters based on similarity, and then we produce stereotypes about other clusters of people. In my opinion, one way of transcending these cultural ghettos is through the art of storytelling

~ Elif Shafak

Identity politics divides us; fiction connects. One is interested in sweeping generalizations, the other in nuances. One draws boundaries, the other recognizes no frontiers. Identity politics is made of solid bricks; fiction is flowing water.

~ Elif Shafak

Choose Love, Love! Without the sweet life ofLove, living is a burden - as you have seen.

~ Elif Shafak

Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don’t let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, “honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.” Good to remember…

~ Elif Shafak

Faith is only a word if there is no love at its center, so flaccid and lifeless, vague and hollow - not anything you could truly feel.

~ Elif Shafak

To each his own way and his own prayer. God does not take us at our word. He looks deep into our hearts. It is not the ceremonies or rituals that make a difference, but whether our hearts are sufficiently pure or not.

~ Elif Shafak

What is the point of roaming the world when it's the same misery everywhere?

~ Elif Shafak

...when women survive an awful marriage or love affair, and all that shit, they generally avoid another relationship for quite some time. With men, however, it is just the opposite; the moment they finish a catastrophe they start looking for another one. Men are incapable of being alone.

~ Elif Shafak

Three scents accompany my memories of this place: cut wood, poppy-seed bread, and the soft, crisp smell of snow.

~ Elif Shafak

Each time I say good-bye to a place I like, I feel like I am leaving a part of me behind. I guess whether we choose to travel as much as Marco Polo did or stay in the same spot from cradle to grave, life is a sequence of births and deaths. Moments are born and moments die. For new experiences to come to light, old ones need to wither away.

~ Elif Shafak

You are too timid for me. You care too much about what other people think. But you know what? Because you are so desperate to win the approval of others, you'll never get rid of their criticisms, no matter how hard you try. You say you want to travel the path, but you don't want to sacrifice anything to that end. Money, fame, power, lavishness, or carnal pleasure - whatever it is that one holds most dear in life, one should dispose of that first.

~ Elif Shafak

That is what the past was, that which you could not get rid of. The past did not resemble the crumbs spilled over a rug. You could not shake them out from open windows.

~ Elif Shafak

Inside, I found three things: a silver mirror, a silk handkerchief, and a glass flask of ointment. These items will help you on your journey. use them when need be. If you ever lose faith in yourself, the mirror will show your inner beauty. In case your reputation is stained, the handkerchief will remind you of how pure your heart is. As for the balm, it will heal your wounds, both inside and outside.

~ Elif Shafak

It never took her long to darken any conversation, as from birth she was inclined to see misery in each and every story, and to fabricate some when there was none.

~ Elif Shafak

The impression she left on others and her self-perception had been sewn into a whole so consummate that she could no longer tell how much of each day was defined by what was wished upon her and how much of it was what she really wanted.--Three Daughters of Eve.

~ Elif Shafak

How terrible it was to still be mentally and emotionally attached to someone from whom you have been physically separated.

~ Elif Shafak

It was always like this. When you spoke the truth, they hated you. The more you talked about love, the more they hated you.

~ Elif Shafak

To the one in the skies, this city must look like a scintillating pattern of speckled glows in all directions, like a firecracker going off amid thick darkness. Right now the urban pattern glowing here is in hues of orange, ginger, and ochre. It is a configuration of sparkles, each dot a light lit by someone awake at this hour. From where the Celestial Gaze is situated, from that high above, all these sporadically lit bulbs must seem in perfect harmony, constantly flickering, as if coding a cryptic message to God.

~ Elif Shafak

There was something in the color white that resembled silence. Both were emptied of life.

~ Elif Shafak

Let us choose one another as companions!Let us sit at each other's feet!Inwardly we have many harmonies - think notThat we are only what we see.

~ Elif Shafak

There were many words piled up inside my chest, stories waiting to be told. I wanted to hand all this knowledge to one other person, neither a master nor a disciple. I sought an equal - a companion.

~ Elif Shafak