Elif Quotes & Sayings

When I am writing political op-eds, I do think carefully about the impact of my words. When I am writing fiction, it's a different story. In my fiction I am more reckless. I don't care about the real world until I am done with the book. — Elif Safak

If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment. — Elif Shafak

She left her breast behind, the breast that covered her heart. And walked away. — Elif Shafak

Religious people are so confident of having God by their side that they think they are superior to everyone else — Elif Shafak

I don't know if I ended up siding with the academics just because I happened to end up in graduate school, or if I ended up in graduate school because I already secretly sided with the academics. In any case, I stopped believing that "theory" had the power to ruin literature for anyone, or that it was possible to compromise something you loved by studying it. Was love really such a tenuous thing? Wasn't the point of love that it made you want to learn more, to immerse yourself, to become possessed? — Elif Batuman

That was the one thing about the rain that likened it to sorrow: You did your best to remain untouched, safe and dry, but if and when you failed, there came a point in which you started seeing the problem less in terms of drops than as an incessant gush, and thereby you decide you might as well get drenched. — Elif Shafak

Not every word is fit for every ear. — 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

Obviously, Turkey is not a typical authoritarian regime, and obviously it's very important that there are free elections. But it's also obvious that this is not a liberal, mature democracy. This is why I call Turkey a wobbly democracy. At any time, it can tip over and fall down. — Elif Safak

A saint belongs to all humanity. — 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

The Path to the Truth is a labor of the heart, not of the head. Make your heart your primary guide! Not your mind. — Elif Shafak

If God was with you all along, why did you rummage around this whole time in search of Him? Because although it is a fact that He cannot be found by seeking, only those who seek can find Him. — Elif Shafak

You dervishes are as crazy as rats in a pantry. Especially you wandering types. All day long you fast and pray and walk under the scorching sun. No wonder you start hallucinating - your brain is fried! — Elif Shafak

The words that come out of our mouths do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time. — Elif Shafak

Rebelliousness is not a good quality in a novice. — Elif Shafak

Intense heat to become strong, Love can only be perfected — Elif Shafak

Even a speck of love should not go unappreciated, because, as Rumi said, love is the water of life. — Elif Shafak

I wish I could look back and say that I have learned to love as much as I loved to learn. But if I like, there could be a cauldron boiling for me in hell tomorrow, and who can assure me tomorrow is not already on my doorstep, now that I am as old as an oak tree, and still not consigned to the grave? — Elif Shafak

Just as clay needs to go through intense heat to become strong, Love can only be perfected in pain. — Elif Shafak

I think any start has to be a false start because really there's no way to start. You just have to force yourself to sit down and turn off the quality censor. And you have to keep the censor off, or you start second-guessing every other sentence. Sometimes the suspicion of a possible false start comes through, and you have to suppress it to keep writing. But it gets more persistent. And the moment you know it's really a false start is when you start ... it's hard to put into words. — Elif Batuman

People who would refuse to share their bread shared their insanity instead.

-Three Daughters of Eve — Elif Shafak

I kept thinking about the uneven quality of time--the way it was almost always so empty, and then with no warning came a few days that felt so dense and alive and real that it seemed indisputable that that was what life was, that its real nature had finally been revealed. But then time passed and unthinkably grew dead again, and it turned out that that fullness had been an aberration and might never come back. — Elif Batuman

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

Since when is being a rotten drunkard a symbol of freedom? — Elif Shafak

How can you blame others for disrespecting you when you think of yourself as unworthy of respect? — Elif Safak

I spent the next two weeks flopped on my grandmother's super-bourgeois rose-colored velvet sofa, consuming massive quantites of grapes, reading obsessively. — Elif Batuman

There were different ways of growing old, perhaps. Some withered first in body, others in mind, yet others in soul. — Elif Shafak

We were all created in His image, and yet we were each created different and unique. No two people are alike. No two hearts beat to the same rhythm. If God had wanted everyone to be the same. He would have made it so. Therefore, disrespecting differences and imposing your thoughts on others is tantamount to disrespecting God's holy scheme. — Elif Safak

About the great preacher. I wanted to see him through foreign eyes, kind and unkind, loving and unloving, before I looked on him with my own. — 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

In a normal democracy, you protect the individual from the excessive power of the state. In Turkey, power elites try to protect the state - as if this state were fragile and needed protection - when in fact, it's too powerful already. — Elif Safak

Let love take hold of you and change you. At first through its presence then through its absence. — Elif Shafak

I write as if I were drunk. It is a process of intuition rather than placing myself above my story like a puppeteer pulling strings. For me, it's a scary, chaotic process over which I have little control. Words demand other words, characters resist me. — Elif Safak

I suppressed a sigh. Hungary felt increasingly like reading War and Peace: new characters came up every five minutes, with their unusual names and distinctive locutions, and you had to pay attention to them for a time, even though you might never see them again for the whole rest of the book. I would rather have talked to Ivan, the love interest, but somehow I didn't get to decide. At the same time, I also felt that these superabundant personages weren't irrelevant at all, but somehow the opposite, and that when Ivan had told me to make friends with the other kids, he had been telling me something important about the world, about how the fateful character in your life wasn't the one who buried you in a rock, but the one who led you out to more people. — Elif Batuman

The chemistry of mind is different from the chemistry of love. The mind is careful, suspicious, he advances little by little. He advices "Be careful, protect yourself" Whereas love says "Let yourself, go!" The mind is strong, never fells down, while love hurts itself, fells into ruins. But isn't it in ruins that we mostly find the treasures? A broken heart hides so many treasures. — Elif Shafak

May love find you when you least expect, where you least expect. — Elif Shafak

I love commuting between languages just like I love commuting between cultures and cities. — Elif Safak

No reason to feel depressed about being depressed. A depression can be a golden opportunity to collect the pieces and build ourselves anew. Global Souls are always on the move, nomads at heart, connected to various cities, commuters between cultures, both from here and everywhere. — Elif Shafak

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

Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! — Elif Shafak

If you carry a sword, you obey the sword, not the other way round. Nobody can hold a weapon and keep their hands clear of blood at the same time. — Elif Shafak

The child had indeed shut up but all the questions that had accumulated on his tongue circulated in his mouth, moved through the passages of his nose and climbed up from there to tickle into his teardrop ducts, so in his moss green pupils, curious, insistent, accusing sparks of questions continued to light up and fade away like fireflies flitting about on summer nights. — Elif Shafak

We're all what we are. And we're all subject to change. It is a journey from here to there. — Elif Shafak

East, West, South or North makes little difference. No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey, a journey within. If you travel within, you'll travel the whole wide world and beyond. — Elif Shafak

She never confronted the death of anything, be it a habit, a phase, or a marriage, even when the end stood right in front of her, plain and inevitable. — Elif Shafak

Do not go with the flow. Be the flow. — Elif Shafak

The water that scares you rejuvenates me. For me I can swim, and swim I shall. — Elif Shafak

The novel form is about the protagonist's struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his favorite books. — Elif Batuman

(N)ever apportion blame. How can there be opponents or rivals or even "others" when there is no "self" in the first place? — Elif Shafak

How amazing was this ability to achieve plenty by achieving little, to go home empty-handed yet still satisfied at the end of the day! — Elif Shafak

Bountiful is your life, full and complete. Or so you think, until someone comes along and makes you realize what you have been missing all this time. Like a mirror that reflects what is absent rather than present, he shows you the void in your soul - the void you have resisted seeing. That person can be a lover, a friend, or a spiritual master. Sometimes it can be a child to look after. What matters is to find the soul that will complete
yours. All the prophets have given the same advice: Find the one who will be your mirror!. — Elif Shafak

At the first such gathering, I politely sat with them for half an hour, drank some vodka, and even recited a toast about how great it was that Gulya had such great friends. This proved to be a tactical error, since afterward Gulya wanted me to drink vodka and recite toasts with them every night, which was not compatible with my program of study of the great Uzbek language. — Elif Batuman

There's something about love that resembles faith. It's kind of blind trust, isn't it? The sweetest euphoria. The magic of connecting with a being beyond our limited, familiar selves. But if we get carried away by love- or by faith- it turns into a dogma, a fixation. The sweetness becomes sour. We suffer in the hands of the gods that we ourselves created. — Elif Shafak

(T)here are friendships in this world that seem incomprehensible to ordinary people, but are in fact conduits to deeper wisdom and insight. — Elif Shafak

In love all boundaries are blurred. — Elif Shafak

From her he had learned two fundamental things about love: first, that unlike what the romantics so pompously argued, love was more a gradual course than a sudden blossoming at first sight, and second, that he was capable of loving. — Elif Shafak

In order to gain mastery, you need to dismantle as much as you put together.'
'Then there'd be no buildings left in the world,' Jahan ventured. 'Everything would be razed to the ground.'
'We are not destroying the buildings, son. We are destroying our desire to possess them. Only God is the owner. Of the stone and of the skill. — Elif Shafak

I learned many interesting things from Delia: for example, that she and Gulya had both married alcoholics, but Delia's alcoholic had taken all her money, whereas Gulya had managed her alcoholic well and taken all his money. — Elif Batuman

Working is prayer for the likes of us," his master often said. "It's the way we commune with God."
"Then how does He respond to us?" Jahan had once asked, way back when he was younger.
"By giving us more work, of course. — Elif Shafak

I found myself remembering the day in kindergarten when the teachers showed us Dumbo, and I realized for the first time that all the kids in the class, even the bullies, rooted for Dumbo, against Dumbo's tormentors. Invariably they laughed and cheered, both when Dumbo succeeded and when bad things happened to his enemies. But they're you, I thought to myself. How did they not know? They didn't know. It was astounding, an astounding truth. Everyone thought they were Dumbo. — Elif Batuman

I have come to believe that if there is one shape that reaches out to all of us, it is the dome. That is where all the distinctions disappear and every single sound, whether of joy or sorrow, merges into one huge silence of all-encompassing love. When I think of the world this way, I feel dazed and disoriented, and cannot tell any longer where the future begins and the past ends, where the West falls and the East rises. — Elif Shafak

And were you able to find Him?" I inquired.
A shadow crossed his face as the dervish noded and said.
"Indeed, He was with me all along. — Elif Shafak

Deep inside, Ella blamed herself. She hadn't aged well — Elif Shafak

Tragedy was a commodity like any other. it was meant to be consumed- individually and collectively. — Elif Shafak

It is never too late to ask yourself, 'Am I ready to change the life I am living? Am I ready to change within?' Even if a single day in your life is the same as the day before, it surely is a pity. At every moment and with each new breath, one should be renewed and renewed again. There is only one way to be born into a new life: to die before death. — 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

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

God created sufferings so that joy might appear through its opposite. Things become manifest through opposites. Since God has no opposite, He remains hidden. — Elif Shafak

I thank Him for all the things He has both given and denied me, for only He knows what is best for me. — Elif Shafak

But the story didn't end there. Almost 800 years later, the spirits of Shams & Rumi are still alive today,whirling amid us somewhere ... — Elif Shafak

If you want to destroy something, be it a blemish, acne or the human soul, all you need to do is surround it with walls. — Elif Shafak

By and large over time, pain turns into grief, grief turns into silence, and silence turns into lonesomeness, as vast and bottomless as the dark oceans — Elif Shafak

Nom de Plume uses the device of the pseudonym to unite the likes of Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, Fernando Pessoa, and Patricia Highsmith into a cohesive yet highly idiosyncratic literary history. Each page affords sparkling facts and valuable insights onto the manufacturing of books and reputations, the keeping and revealing of secrets, the vagaries of private life and public opinion, and the eternally mysterious, often tormented interface between life and literature. — Elif Batuman

Whatever you do, she would have said, don't hurt anyone and don't let anyone hurt you. Be neither a heartbreaker nor heartbroken. — Elif Shafak

Earth: the things that are solid, absorbed and still.
Water: the things that are fluid, changing and unpredictable.
Wind: the things that shift, evolve and challenge.
Fire: the things that damage, devastate and distroy.
The void: the things that are present through their absence — Elif Shafak

We are all a little desexualized, a little defeminized. We can't carry our bodies comfortably in a society that is so bent against women. In order to be a "brain" in the public realm, we control our "bodies. — Elif Shafak

Naked female bodies with their legs apart, a granny and her sagging tits. Terrified, — Elif Shafak

The sharia is like a candle," said Shams of Tabriz. "It provides us with much valuable light. But let us not forget that a candle helps us to go from one place to another in the dark. If we forget where we are headed and instead concentrate on the candle, what good is it? — Elif Shafak

Silence is the worst. Whenever a thick cloud of silence descends, the yapping voices inside me become all the more audible, rising to the surface one by one. I like to believe I know all the women in this inner harm of mine but perhaps there are those I have never met. Together they make a choir that does not know how to tone down. I call them the Choir of Discordant Voices. It is a bizarre choir, now that I think about it. Not only are they all off-key, none of them can read notes. In fact, there is no music at all in what they do. They all talk at the same time, each in a voice louder than the other, never listening to what is being said. They make me afraid of my own diversity, the fragmentation inside of me. That is why I do not like the quiet. I even find it unpleasant, unsettling. — Elif Shafak

The first time I read Isaac Babel was in a college creative writing class. The instructor was a sympathetic Jewish novelist with a Jesus-like beard, an affinity for Russian literature, and a melancholy sense of humor, such that one afternoon he even "realized" the truth of human mortality, right there in the classroom. He pointed at each of us around the seminar table: "You're going to die. And you're going to die. And you're going to die." I still remember the expression on the face of one of my classmates, a genial scion of the Kennedy family who always wrote the same story, about a busy corporate lawyer who neglected his wife. The expression was confused. — Elif Batuman

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

One day a man came running to a Sufi and said, panting, "Hey, they are carrying trays, look over there!"
The Sufi answered calmly, "What is it to us? Is it any of my business?"
"But they are taking those trays to your house!" the man exclaimed.
"Then is it any of your business?" the Sufi said.

Unfortunately, people always watch the trays of others. Instead of minding their own business, they pass judgment on other people. It never ceases to amaze me the things they fabricate! Their imagination knows no limit when it comes to suspicion and slander. — Elif Shafak

You see, dervish, it wasn't always like this. Violence wasn't my element, but it is now. When God forgets about us down here, it falls upon us common people to toughen up and restore justice. So next time you talk to him, you tell him that let him know that when he abandons his lambs, they won't meekly wait to be slaughtered. They will turn into wolves. — Elif Shafak

A few times I saw a chicken walking around importantly, like some kind of a regional manager. — Elif Batuman

Instead of an outer-oriented jihad - defined as "the war against infidels" and carried out by many in those days just as in the present - Rumi stood up for an inner-oriented jihad where the aim was to struggle against and ultimately prevail over one's ego, nafs. — Elif Shafak

Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all. — Elif Shafak

They didn't hear her , but it was enough that GOD did — Elif Shafak

I believe in optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect. But my hope is the people, the society, which is ahead of the government. — Elif Safak

Yeah, we should all line up along the Bosphorus Bridge and puff as hard as we can to shove this city in the direction of the West. If that doesn't work, we'll try the other way, see if we can veer to the East. It's no good to be in between. International politics does not appreciate ambiguity. — Elif Shafak

I find families intriguing, perhaps because I did not grow up in one. I was raised by a feminist, independent, single mother, a divorcee. — Elif Safak

Cities are erected on spiritual columns. Like giant mirrors, they reflect the hearts of their residents. If those hearts darken and lose faith, cities will lose their glamour. — Elif Shafak

If you don't know what to do with an answer, don't ask the question. — Elif Shafak

We are all half fool, half wise , there is no wisdom without foolishness and no pride without shame . — Elif Shafak

Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full. — Elif Shafak

But let us not forget that cities are like human beings. They are born, they go through childhood and adolescence, they grow old, and eventually they die — Elif Shafak

As the number and the size of cities keep growing across the world, changing conditions bring shifts in language and vocabulary. Despite the social and linguistic complexity, however, there are only two types of cities: those where a woman can walk after dark relatively freely and those where she possibly cannot. - Elif Shafak, Taksim Square, Istanbul: Byzantine, Then and Now, — Catie Marron

When you have both eyes closed to the world, a third eye opens in your heart. — Elif Shafak

Knowledge that takes you, not beyond yourself is far worse than ignorance. — Elif Safak

For me, writing stories is one way of feeling connected to the universe and God. — Elif Safak