Top 380 Elif Shafak Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “In resistance lies the key to life.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

103. “When you step into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obsolete. That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

105. “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

106. “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

107. “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

108. “For apprentices everywhere – no one told us that love was the hardest craft to master.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

113. “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

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

— Elif Shafak

115. “Why roots were rated so highly compared with branches or leaves, Peri had never understood. Trees had multiple shoots and filaments extending in every direction, under and above the ancient soils of the earth. If even roots refused to stay put, why expect the impossible from human beings?”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

117. “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

118. “When you first became a father, you assumed your child was an extension of yourself. He gave you pride, and a sense of achievement and rootedness, until you came to realize, little by little, that a child was a being of his own making. He would keep to his own destiny, no matter how much you wished, prompted or forced him to follow in your footsteps.”

— Elif Shafak

119. “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

120. “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

121. “But, then again, anyone who expects love to be sensible has perhaps never loved.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

123. “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

124. “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

125. “Yet hope is a hazardous chemical capable of triggering a chain reaction in the human soul.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

127. “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

128. “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

129. “Just because you think it’s safe here, it doesn’t mean this is the right place for you, her heart countered. Sometimes where you feel most safe is where you least belong.”

— Elif Shafak

130. “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

131. “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

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

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

134. “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

135. “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

136. “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

137. “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

138. “At night, when the moon shone high above the lemon trees and there was a shiver in the air, of insects invisible to the eye or fairies sent to exile, Kostas would sometimes catch his mother staring at him with a pained expression.”

— Elif Shafak

139. “People who have much to say, a distinctive story to tell, often do not do so because they fear their words will fall on deaf ears. They feel excluded from political power and, to a large extent, from political and civic participation. Even if they were to shout their grievances from the rooftops of Westminster – or Brussels or Washington or New Delhi – they doubt it would have the slightest impact on public policy.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

141. “It’s odd how faces, solid and visible as they are, evaporate, while words, made of breath, stay.”

— Elif Shafak

142. “Perhaps in a world bound with rules and regulations that made little sense, and usually privileged a few over the many, madness was the only true freedom.”

— Elif Shafak

143. “Johnny Cash and existential philosophy, they both probe the human soul to see what’s inside, and unhappy with their findings, they both leave it open!”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

145. “Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me.”

— Elif Shafak

146. “Things that can seem malicious or unfortunate are often a blessing in disguise, whereas things that might seem unpleasant can be harmful in the long run.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

148. “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

149. “Time is a songbird, and just like any other songbird, it can be taken captive.”

— Elif Shafak

150. “England has a peculiar way of making foreigners feel exhilaratingly free and depressingly alone.”

— Elif Shafak