Top 450 Elif Shafak Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

202. “If wanting to be heard is one side of the coin, the other side is being willing to listen. The two are inextricably connected. When convinced that no one – especially those in places of power and privilege – is really paying attention to our protests and demands we will be less inclined to listen to others, particularly to people whose views differ from ours.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

204. “Male writers are thought of as “writers” first and then “men”. As for female writers, they are first “female” and only then “writers”.”

— Elif Shafak

205. “Because you’ll compare. If you think you are better than the others, you’ll be poisoned by hubris. If you think another’s better, poisoned by envy. Either way, it is poison.”

— Elif Shafak

206. “She was a foreigner and, like all foreigners, she carried with her the shadow of an elsewhere.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

208. “If only time never came to its senses. If somehow it wouldn’t succeed in walking a straight line. If it would only lurch, behave nonsensically, fall to pieces. And we would watch, and, condemning its actions, would never have to refer to it again.”

— Elif Shafak

209. “In everything we do, it is our hearts that make the difference, not our outer appearances... keep both eyes closed and instead open a third eye – the eye that sees the inner realm.”

— Elif Shafak

210. “Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven as they are both present inside this very moment. Why worry so much about the aftermath, an imaginary future, when this very moment is the only time we can truly and fully experience the presence and absence of God in our lives? Motivated by neither the fear of punishment nor the desire to be rewarded in heaven, Sufis love God simply because they love him.”

— Elif Shafak

211. “Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That’s the hardest part and that’s what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.” I nodded. I didn’t need to ask in order to understand that this, too, was one of the rules.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

213. “God was a maze without a map, a circle without a centre; the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that never seemed to fit together. If only she could solve this mystery, she could bring meaning to senselessness, reason to madness, order to chaos, and perhaps, too, she could learn to be happy.”

— Elif Shafak

214. “In general, one shouldn’t be too rigid about anything because “to live meant to constantly shift colours.”

— Elif Shafak

215. “The past is a trunk in the loft, crammed with scraps, some valuable, but many entirely useless. Although I’d prefer to keep it closed, the slight breeze throws it open, and, before I know it, all the contents have flown everywhere. I put them back. One by one. The memories, the bad and the good. Yet the trunk always snaps open again when I least expect it.”

— Elif Shafak

216. “We must do what we can to mend our lives, we owe that to ourselves – but we need to be careful not to break others while achieving that.”

— Elif Shafak

217. “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

218. “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

219. “The person who is openly loved by someone who is admired by so many people is bound to draw the envy, if not the hatred, of others.”

— Elif Shafak

220. “There is no together anymore. Once a pomegranate breaks and all its seeds scatter in differetnt directions, you cannot put it back together.”

— Elif Shafak

221. “People from troubled islands can never be normal. We can pretend, we can even make amazing progress – but we can never really learn to feel safe. The ground that feels rock hard to others is choppy waters for our kind.”

— Elif Shafak

222. “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

223. “She had always suspected that even the calmest and sweetest women under stress were prone to outbursts of violence. Since she thought of herself as neither calm nor sweet, she had reckoned that her potential to lose control was considerably greater than theirs.”

— Elif Shafak

224. “As soon as this stage was reached and the ex-love lost his or her appeal, those suffering from abiding heartache could finally let go of their obsession, for love loves power. That is why we can suicidally fall in love with others but can rarely reciprocate the love of those suicidally in love with us.”

— Elif Shafak

225. “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

226. “They ooze down slowly, a flow so slight as to be imperceptible, moving across time and space, until they find a crack in which to settle and coagulate. The path of an inherited trauma is random; you never know who might get it, but someone will.”

— Elif Shafak

227. “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

228. “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

229. “In badly fractured societies that have lost their appreciation of diversity and their regard for pluralism, opponents will be seen as enemies, politics will become replete with marital metaphors and anyone who thinks and speaks differently will be labeled as a ‘traitor’.”

— Elif Shafak

230. “Without understanding our past, how can we hope to shape our future?”

— Elif Shafak

231. “Sea love seeks sea beauty. And you, my heart, deserve sea love, the strong and profound and enchanting type.”

— Elif Shafak

232. “Early on she learned that there was no fight more hurtful than a family fight, and no family fight more hurtful than one over God.”

— Elif Shafak

233. “Superstitions are the shadows of fears unknown.”

— Elif Shafak

234. “The moment we stop listening to diverse opinions is also when we stop learning. Because the truth is we don’t learn much from sameness and monotony. We usually learn from differences.”

— Elif Shafak

235. “I listened to her with respect, knowing what resilient migrants they are, seen almost everywhere across the globe. They can fly for an impressive 2,500 miles. I have never understood why humans regard butterflies as fragile. Optimists they may be, but fragile, never!”

— Elif Shafak

236. “Believe in your values and your rules, but never lord them over others... Learn the Truth, my friend, but be careful not to make a fetish out of your truths.”

— Elif Shafak

237. “Throughout my long life, I have observed, again and again, this psychological pendulum that drives human nature. Every few decades they sway into a zone of unbridled optimism and insist on seeing everything through a rosy filter, only to be challenged and shaken by events and catapulted back into their habitual apathy and listless indifference.”

— Elif Shafak

238. “A bee would work her entire brief life just to make enough honey to fill the tip of a teaspoon.”

— Elif Shafak

239. “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

240. “Well, think about it: a friend is someone you can walk with in the dark and learn lots of things from. But you also know you are different people – you and your friend. You are not your depression. You are much more than what your mood is today or tomorrow.”

— Elif Shafak

241. “Life is about perfection. Every incident that happens, no matter how colossal or small, and every hardship that we endure is an aspect of a divine plan that works to that end.”

— Elif Shafak

242. “Petite-Ma retained a most special place in Asya’s heart. She loved her dearly. Unlike some others in the family, Petite-Ma had always been capable of loving without suffocating. She would never nag or nitpick or sting. Her protectiveness was not possessive.”

— Elif Shafak

243. “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

244. “Whether in the name of God or science, there was no satisfaction for the ego quite like the satisfaction of converting someone to your side.”

— Elif Shafak

245. “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

246. “And what about our ancestors – can they, too, continue to exist through us? Is that why, when you meet some individuals – just as with some trees – you can’t help feeling that they must be much older than their chronological age? Where do you start someone’s story when every life has more than one thread and what we call birth is not the only beginning nor is death exactly an end?”

— Elif Shafak

247. “Who Am I? Do I have a single identity – based on nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, gender or geography? Or am I essentially a mixture of multiple belongings, cultural allegiances and diverse inheritances, backgrounds and trajectories? How we define our identity will shape our next steps.”

— Elif Shafak

248. “The silence diffused outwards into the air; spreading and congealing into an ugly and uneven thickness, stagnant like algae forming on a late-summer pond.”

— Elif Shafak

249. “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

250. “I liked loneliness. I cherished it. I knew people who would go nuts if they were alone for too many hours. It was the opposite with me. I would go nuts if I had to be in the company of other people all the time. I would miss my privacy.”

— Elif Shafak