Top 380 Elif Shafak Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “May love find you when you least expect, where you least expect.”

— Elif Shafak

52. “There is only one way to be born into a new life: to die before death.”

— Elif Shafak

53. “May you never be able to forget. May you go to your grave still remembering.”

— Elif Shafak

54. “That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence.”

— Elif Shafak

55. “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

56. “Sometimes, absence is actually a bond and distance can help you to look closer.”

— Elif Shafak

57. “Our politics is very masculine, very aggressive, and it’s very polarizing. And the pace of this development has increased in recent years. Erdogan is, in my eyes, the most polarizing politician in recent Turkish political history.”

— Elif Shafak

58. “When you have both eyes closed to the world, a third eye opens in your heart.”

— Elif Shafak

59. “Turkey has a very young, dynamic, curious population. In Europe, Facebook and Twitter are mostly about sharing daily experiences while for Turkish people, social networks are political platforms.”

— Elif Shafak

60. “Sometimes I feel I have more faith in European ideals than some of my British or French friends. For them, it’s a financial burden. For me, Europe is primarily about values, about fundamental rights, freedom, women’s rights.”

— Elif Shafak

61. “Many analysts compare Turkey with countries in the Middle East, but I think we need to compare it with Russia. Both countries come from a tradition of empire, and also from a tradition of the strong state.”

— Elif Shafak

Featured in: Strong Quotes, Country Quotes

62. “She was no part of anything. In her unbroken loneliness, she was complete. Never had she felt so exposed, yet si powerful.”

— Elif Shafak

63. “If you weep for all the sorrows in this world, in the end you will have no eyes.”

— Elif Shafak

64. “The places where we were born are the shape of our lives, even when we are away from them.”

— Elif Shafak

65. “Feminists are now being vilified in politics, erdogan used to speak more embracingly, saying he was the leader of everyone, whether they voted for him or not. He sounds as if he puts a distance between himself and half the nation.”

— Elif Shafak

66. “What was love if it wasn’t nursing someone else’s pain as if it were your own?”

— Elif Shafak

67. “Almost half of the Turkish population believes it is not legitimate to criticize the government. Interestingly, this correlates with the number of supporters of Erdogan’s government.”

— Elif Shafak

68. “Each time I say good-bye to a place I like, I feel like I am leaving a part of me behind.”

— Elif Shafak

69. “Arriving there is what you are destined for, But do not hurry the journey at all.”

— Elif Shafak

70. “In order to gain mastery, you need to dismantle as much as you put together.”

— Elif Shafak

71. “They say there is a thin line between losing yourself in God and losing your mind.”

— Elif Shafak

72. “Doesn’t God say, I am closer to you than your jugular vein?” I asked. “God is not someplace far up in the sky. He is inside each and every one of us. That is why He never abandons us. How can He abandon Himself?”

— Elif Shafak

73. “Mothers don’t go to heaven when they die. They get special permission from God to stay around a bit longer and watch over their children, no matter what has passed between them in their brief mortal lives.”

— Elif Shafak

74. “We must strive to become intellectual nomads, keep moving, keep learning, resist confining ourselves in any cultural or mental ghetto, and spend more time not in select centres but at the margins, which is where real change always comes from.”

— Elif Shafak

75. “In the name of religion they are killing God.”

— Elif Shafak

76. “Acts of barbarity can happen fast and on a large scale not when more people turn immoral or evil, not necessarily, but when enough people become numb. When we are indifferent, disconnected, atomised. Too busy with our own lives to care about others. Uninterested in and unmoved by someone else’s pain. That is the most dangerous emotion – the lack of emotion.”

— Elif Shafak

77. “My hijab has never got in the way of my independence.”

— Elif Shafak

78. “While some people were passionate believers and others passionate non-believers, she would always remain stuck in between.”

— Elif Shafak

79. “In that moment Jahan understood that life was the sum of the choices one did not make; the paths yearned for but not taken.”

— Elif Shafak

80. “Never be ashamed of your tears. Cry and everyone knows you’re alive.”

— Elif Shafak

81. “As far as she was concerned, the apocalypse was not the worst thing that could happen. The possibility of an immediate and wholesale decimation of civilization was not half as frightening as the simple realization that our individual passing had no impact on the order of things, and life would go on just the same with or without us. Now that, she had always thought, was terrifying.”

— Elif Shafak

82. “Her mother had once told her that childhood was a big, blue wave that lifted you up, carried you forth and, just when you thought it would last forever, vanished from sight. You could neither run after it nor bring it back. But the wave, before it disappeared, left a gift behind – a conch shell on the shore. Inside the seashell were stored all the sounds of childhood.”

— Elif Shafak

83. “Beyond wildest dreams, strange things happened to people when they were ready for the unusual and the unexpected.”

— Elif Shafak

84. “Not every word is fit for every ear.”

— Elif Shafak

85. “The midwife knows that when there is no pain, the way for the baby cannot be opened and the mother cannot give birth. Likewise, for a new Self to be born, hardship is necessary.”

— Elif Shafak

86. “Hadn’t every story she’d been told since she was a child carried the same message? You could traverse deserts, climb mountains, sail oceans and beat giants, so long as you had a crumb of hope in your pocket.”

— Elif Shafak

87. “If you don’t know what to do with an answer, don’t ask the question.”

— Elif Shafak

88. “Love is the bold affirmation of hope.”

— Elif Shafak

89. “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

90. “We can find our true selves only in the faces of the Other.”

— Elif Shafak

91. “Never had it occurred to him that you could deceive the person you held dear. It was his first lesson in the complexity of love.”

— Elif Shafak

92. “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

93. “If you’re telling me I should accept things as they are... that nations like obedient good wives, should also give up their dreams, their fantasies... then your grasp of international relations – and women for that matter – is weaker than I thought.”

— Elif Shafak

94. “Don’t underestimate the good in you.”

— Elif Shafak

95. “One day you’ll look back and say, why was I even worried about that?”

— Elif Shafak

96. “She liked fuchsia better – a colour with personality.”

— Elif Shafak

97. “Trees might not have eyes but we have vision. I respond to light. I detect ultraviolet and infrared and electromagnetic waves. If.”

— Elif Shafak

98. “First-generation immigrants... Both eternally grateful for the chances life has given them and scarred by what it has snatched away, always out of place, separated from others by some unspoken experience, like survivors of a car accident.”

— Elif Shafak

99. “For despite what some people say, love is not only a sweet feeling bound to come and quickly go away. Her jaw dropped as she realized this was the.”

— Elif Shafak

100. “The world is unfair, said Meryem. “If a stone falls on an egg, it is bad for the egg; if an egg falls on a stone, it is still bad for the egg.”

— Elif Shafak