Top 380 Elif Shafak Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.”

— Elif Shafak

Featured in: Be Yourself Quotes, Being Yourself Quotes

2. “Stop running after the waves. Let the sea come to you.”

— Elif Shafak

Featured in: Quotes About the Sea

3. “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

Featured in: Romantic Quotes, You Are Loved Quotes, Short Love Quotes for Her, Love Quotes for Wife, Quotes About Stories

4. “Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all.”

— Elif Shafak

5. “How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves. If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we.”

— Elif Shafak

6. “Either grant me the bliss of the ignorant or give me the strength to bear the knowledge.”

— Elif Shafak

7. “I hunt everywhere for a life worth living and a knowledge worth knowing. Having roots nowhere, I have everywhere to go.”

— Elif Shafak

8. “How can you blame others for disrespecting you when you think of yourself as unworthy of respect?”

— Elif Shafak

9. “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

10. “What is the point of roaming the world when it’s the same misery everywhere?”

— Elif Shafak

11. “Where there is love, there is bound to be heartache.”

— Elif Shafak

12. “Even a speck of love should not go unappreciated, because, as Rumi said, love is the water of life.”

— Elif Shafak

13. “Believers are each other’s mirrors.”

— Elif Shafak

14. “Knowledge that takes you, not beyond yourself is far worse than ignorance.”

— Elif Shafak

15. “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

16. “Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness.”

— Elif Shafak

17. “If you want to destroy something in this life, be it acne, a blemish or the human soul, all you need to do is to surround it with thick walls. It will dry up inside.”

— Elif Shafak

18. “The past lives within the present, and our ancestors breathe through our children.”

— Elif Shafak

19. “Stories cannot demolish frontiers, but they can punch holes in our mental walls, and through those holes we can get a glimpse of the other and sometimes even like what we see.”

— Elif Shafak

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

20. “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

21. “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 Shafak

22. “Time is just an illusion. What you need is to live this very moment. That is all that matters.”

— Elif Shafak

23. “The digital world is developing with such force and such a pace that you simply can’t ban or control it. People want to be globally connected.”

— Elif Shafak

24. “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

25. “Moments are born and moments die. For new experiences to come to life, old ones need to wither away.”

— Elif Shafak

26. “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

27. “A saint belongs to all humanity.”

— Elif Shafak

28. “Personally, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with sadness. Just the opposite – hypocrisy made people happy and truth made them sad.”

— Elif Shafak

29. “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

30. “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 Shafak

31. “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

32. “The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves through and within us, in endless spirals. Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness.”

— Elif Shafak

33. “Isn’t connecting people to distant lands and culture one of the strengths of good literature?”

— Elif Shafak

34. “Perhaps this is why lunatics have a harder time dating, not because they are off the wall but because it is hard to find soemone who is willing to date so many people in one person.”

— Elif Shafak

35. “Article Five: If you have no reason or ability to accomplish anything, then just practice the art of becoming.”

— Elif Shafak

36. “Love exists within each of us from the moment we are born and waits to be discovered from then on.”

— Elif Shafak

37. “Stories bring us together, untold stories keep us apart.”

— Elif Shafak

38. “Turkey in general became too involved with what is happening in Egypt and in Syria. Some politicians with neo-Ottoman dreams developed this idea of being a major player in the Middle East, which hasn’t gone as expected.”

— Elif Shafak

39. “I remember a time when it was ok to make fun of politicians and powerful people. Now, it’s not ok anymore. We’ve forgotten how to laugh.”

— Elif Shafak

Featured in: Fun Quotes

40. “Help me out of this dilemma. Either grant me the bliss of the ignorant or give me the strength to bear the knowledge. Whichever you choose shall make me grateful, but please don’t make me powerless and knowledgeable at the same time.”

— Elif Shafak

41. “There are no coincidences in the universe, only signs. Can you see the signs?”

— Elif Shafak

42. “After the Ankara bombings on October 10, people were asked to hold a minute of silence, but many refused. Our society can’t even unite in grief to honor the victims. We’ve lost our empathy. That’s maybe the worst.”

— Elif Shafak

43. “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

44. “I would like the refugee crisis to become a new beginning in the Turkish-European relationship. But it would be very problematic if, during this process, human rights were forgotten. Democracy needs to be the priority.”

— Elif Shafak

45. “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

46. “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 Shafak

47. “I see two opposite tendencies in Turkish society: people feel demoralized, they lose the interest in politics and retreat to their private lives; or they become very angry and even more politicized, and radicalized. Both trends are troublesome.”

— Elif Shafak

48. “Love cannot be explained. It can only be experienced. Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all.”

— Elif Shafak

49. “We cannot abandon this rabbit hole for fear of a traumatic encounter with our own culture.”

— Elif Shafak

50. “There are more fake gurus and false teachers in this world than the number of stars in the visible universe. Don’t confuse power-driven, self-centered people with true mentors. A genuine spiritual master will not direct your attention to himself or herself and will not expect absolute obedience or utter admiration from you, but instead will help you to appreciate and admire your inner self. True mentors are as transparent as glass. They let the Light of God pass through them.”

— Elif Shafak