Top 380 Elif Shafak Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “They say there is a thin line between losing yourself in God and losing your mind.”

— Elif Shafak

102. “Just as clay needs to go through intense heat to become strong, Love can only be perfected in pain.”

— Elif Shafak

103. “The water that scares you rejuvenates me. For me I can swim, and swim I shall.”

— Elif Shafak

104. “Your destiny is the level where you will play your tune. You might not change your instrument but how well to play is entirely in your hands.”

— Elif Shafak

105. “If you have no interest in their answers, then do not ask questions.”

— Elif Shafak

106. “Mourning is like virginity. You should give it to the one who deserves it most.”

— Elif Shafak

107. “On the Sufi path, first you discover the art of being alone amid the crowd. Next you discover the crowd within your solitude – the voices inside you.”

— Elif Shafak

108. “Love is the bold affirmation of hope. You don’t embrace hope when death and destruction are in command. You don’t put on your best dress and tuck a flower in your hair when you are surrounded by ruins and shards. You don’t lose your heart at a time when hearts are supposed to remain sealed, especially for those who are not of your religion, not of your language, not of your blood. You don’t fall in love in Cyprus in the summer of 1974. Not here, not now. And yet there they were, the two of them.”

— Elif Shafak

109. “Resentment is a cage, talent is a captured bird. Break the cage, let the bird take off and soar high. Architecture is a mirror that reflects the harmony and balance present in the universe. If you do not foster these qualities in your heart, you cannot build.”

— Elif Shafak

110. “Because love is the very essence and purpose of life. As Rumi reminds us, it hits everybody, including those who shun love – even those who use the word “romantic” as a sign of disapproval.”

— Elif Shafak

111. “Instead of intrusion or passivity, may I suggest submission? Some people make the mistake of confusing “submission” with “weakness,” whereas it is anything but. Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe, including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend.”

— Elif Shafak

112. “Wisdom consists of ten parts: nine parts of silence, one part of words.”

— Elif Shafak

113. “Was religion an empowering force for women who otherwise had limited power in a society designed for and by men, or was it yet another tool for facilitating their submission?”

— Elif Shafak

114. “Masters are great but books are better. He who has a library has a thousand teachers. Your Prophet said, “Seek lore, even if it be in China.” Mine said, “God created us because He wanted to be known.” Ignorant men think we are here to fight and make wars and to couple and have children. Nay, our job is to expand our knowledge.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

116. “Kader ’, people called it – ‘destiny’ – and said no more, because people always gave simple names to the complex things that frightened them.”

— Elif Shafak

117. “Busbecq believed there were two blessings in life: books and friends. And that they should be possessed in inverse quantities: many books, but only a handful of friends.”

— Elif Shafak

118. “Love can only be perfected in pain.”

— Elif Shafak

119. “Cartography is another name for stories told by winners. For stories told by those who have lost, there isn’t one.”

— Elif Shafak

120. “Because in real life, unlike in history books, stories come to us not in their entirety but in bits and pieces, broken segments and partial echoes, a full sentence here, a fragment there, a clue hidden in between.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

122. “Certainty was to curiosity what the sun was to the wings of Icarus. Where one shone forcefully, the other couldn’t survive. With certainty came arrogance; with arrogance, blindness; with blindness, darkness; and with darkness, more certainty.”

— Elif Shafak

123. “Choice and confusion were conjoined twins.”

— Elif Shafak

124. “I didn’t make falafel. It’s not even our cuisine.”

— Elif Shafak

125. “Where do you start someone’s story when life has more then one thread and what we call birth is not the only beginning, nor is death exactly an end.”

— Elif Shafak

126. “In many ways the twenty-first century is not that different from the thirteenth century. Both will be recorded in history as times of unprecedented religious clashes, cultural misunderstandings, and a general sense of insecurity and fear of the Other. At times like these, the need for love is greater than ever.”

— Elif Shafak

127. “No one can survive alone – except the Almighty God. And remember, in the desert of life, the fool travels alone and the wise by caravan.”

— Elif Shafak

128. “I cannot prevent people from destroying. All I can do is keep building.”

— Elif Shafak

129. “What we need is sincere self-examination. Not being on the watch for the fault of others.”

— Elif Shafak

130. “I’d rather extinguish the fire in hell and burn heaven, so that people could start loving God for no other reason than love.”

— Elif Shafak

131. “It’s easy to love a perfect God, unblemished and infallible that He is. What is far more difficult is to love fellow human beings with all their imperfections and defects. Remember, one can only know what one is capable of loving. There is no wisdom without love. Unless we learn to love God’s creation, we can neither truly love nor truly know God. I.”

— Elif Shafak

132. “We’re all what we are. And we’re all subject to change. It is a journey from here to there.”

— Elif Shafak

133. “Knowledge requires reading. Books. In-depth analyses. Investigative journalism. Then there is wisdom, which connects the mind and the heart, activates emotional intelligence, expands empathy. For that we need stories and storytelling.”

— Elif Shafak

134. “His honesty offended others, but he liked to provoke people to see what came out of them in moments of anger.”

— Elif Shafak

135. “In resistance lies the key to life.”

— Elif Shafak

136. “At night, flooded with light, Istanbul shone brighter than the eyes of a young bride.”

— Elif Shafak

137. “People assume it’s a matter of personality, the difference between optimists and pessimists. But I believe it all comes down to an inability to forget. The greater your powers of retention, the slimmer your chances at optimism.”

— Elif Shafak

138. “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

139. “The dervish calmly responded, “Yes, but I know myself, and believe me, it would have been much worse if it were the other way round.” As long as I knew myself, I would be all right. Whosoever knows himself, knows the One.”

— Elif Shafak

140. “You don’t share a language, you think, and then you realise, grief is a language. We understand each other, people with troubled pasts.”

— Elif Shafak

141. “Sooner or later we were destined to meet. And when we did, I would learn why his kind hazel eyes were eternally sad and how I came to be murdered on an early-spring night.”

— Elif Shafak

142. “A map is a two-dimensional representation with arbitrary symbols and incised lines that decide who is to be our enemy and who is to be our friend, who deserves our love and who deserves our hatred and who, our sheer indifference.”

— Elif Shafak

143. “People let their thoughts run amok when they came across things over which they had little control, as if by inventing stories they could make sense of all that was painfully confusing, including their brief stay in this world.”

— Elif Shafak

144. “Loneliness was an inseparable part of being human.”

— Elif Shafak

145. “Stones stay still. A learner, never.”

— Elif Shafak

146. “But it wasn’t enough. Whatever I did, I could not rid my mind of the thought that he didn’t love me. I had no doubt that he liked me and meant me well. But this wasn’t anything even close to love. So harrowing was this thought that it was eating me up inside, gnawing at my body and soul.”

— Elif Shafak

147. “As you aged you cared less and less about what others thought of you, and only then could you be more free.”

— Elif Shafak

148. “Architecture is a conversation with God. And nowhere does He speak more loudly than at the centre.”

— Elif Shafak

149. “I like to borrow a metaphor from the great poet and mystic Rumi who talks about living like a drawing compass. One leg of the compass is static. It is fixed and rooted in a certain spot. Meanwhile, the other leg draws a huge wide circle around the first one, constantly moving. Just like that, one part of my writing is based in Istanbul. It has strong local roots. Yet at the same time the other part travels the whole wide world, feeling connected to several cities, cultures, and peoples.”

— Elif Shafak

150. “How soon things changed and how low people fell and from what heights. Even those whom he thought untouchable. Or perhaps, especially those. It was as if there were two invisible arcs: with our deeds and words we ascended; with our deeds and words we descended.”

— Elif Shafak