Top 450 Elif Shafak Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “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

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

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

254. “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

255. “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

256. “It is a scientifically known fact that collectivities are capable of manipulating their individual members’ beliefs, thoughts, and even bodily reactions. You keep hearing a certain story over and over again, and the next thing you know you have internalized the narrative. From that moment on it ceases to be someone else’s story. It is not even a story anymore, but reality, your reality!”

— Elif Shafak

257. “She never confronted the death of anything, be it a habit, a phase, or a marriage, even when the end stood right in front of her, plain and inevitable.”

— Elif Shafak

258. “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

259. “An ancient clay tablet read, ‘the Babylonian mosquito devil is now in my land; he has slain all the men of my country’. Well, it would have been more accurate if it said, ‘she has slain... ’, as it is the female of the species that causes the carnage, but I guess it’s not the first time women have been written out of history.”

— Elif Shafak

260. “Perhaps nothing was worth worrying about in a city where everything was constantly shifting and dissolving, and the only thing they could ever rely on was this moment in time, which was already half gone.”

— Elif Shafak

261. “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

262. “But human memory resembles a late-night reveller who has had a few too many drinks: hard as it tries, it just cannot follow a straight line. It staggers through a maze of inversions, often moving in dizzying zigzags, immune to reason and liable to collapse altogether.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

265. “There was something childlike in the way grown-ups had a need for stories. They held a naive belief that by telling an inspiring anecdote-the right fable at the right time-they could lift their children’s moods, motivate them to great achievements and simply change reality. There was no point in telling them that life was more complicated than that and words less magical than they presumed.”

— Elif Shafak

266. “The Malady of Certainty.”

— Elif Shafak

267. “Ecco cosa succede quando sei in un Paese straniero: raccogli dettagli come se fossero conchiglie su una spiaggia.”

— Elif Shafak

268. “Of three things in this life she expected no good: a man who had sold his soul to Sheitan; a woman proud of her beauty; and the news that could not wait till the morning to be delivered.”

— Elif Shafak

269. “If wanting to be heard is one side of the coin, the other side is being willing to listen.”

— Elif Shafak

270. “I wish I could have told him that loneliness is a human invention. Trees are never lonely. Humans think they know with certainty where there being ends and someone else’s starts. With there roots tangled and caught up underground, linked to fungi and bacteria, trees harbour no such illusions. For us, everything is interconnected.”

— Elif Shafak

271. “She was the youngest of four girls who could not agree on anything but retained an identical conviction of always being right, and feeling each had nothing to learn from the others but lots to teach.”

— Elif Shafak

272. “For now, grief was pickled and preserved, kept next to the salted meat and dried peppers in the cellars, to be partaken of in better times.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

274. “I believe one reason why humans find it hard to understand plants is because, in order to connect with something other than themselves and genuinely care about it, they need to interact with a face, an image that mirrors theirs as closely as possible.”

— Elif Shafak

275. “Play now! Be friends!” Being of the same age group automatically meant getting along well; somehow peers were regarded as the broken pieces of the same puzzle, expected to suddenly make it complete when brought side by side.”

— Elif Shafak

276. “Believers favour answers over questions, clarity over uncertainty. Athiests, more or less the same. Funny, when it comes to God, Whom we know next to nothing about, very few of us actually say, ‘I don’t know.”

— Elif Shafak

277. “She would rather stay home and, in the witching hours, be immersed in a novel –reading being her way to connect with the universe.”

— Elif Shafak

278. “Humans lose focus easily. Immersed in their politics and conflicts, they get sidetracked, and that is when diseases and pandemics run rampant.”

— Elif Shafak

279. “It seemed to Jahan that, in truth, this world, too, was a spectacle. One way or another, everyone was parading. They performed their tricks, each of them, some staying longer, others shorter, but in the end they all left through the back door, similarly unfulfilled, similarly in need of applause.”

— Elif Shafak

280. “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

281. “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

282. “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

283. “She could detect other people’s sadnesses the way one animal could smell another of its kind a mile away.”

— Elif Shafak

284. “A fig is not exactly a fruit, you see. It is a synconium – a fascinating structure that hides flowers and seeds in its cavity, with a barely visible opening through which wasps can enter and deposit their pollen. And sometimes, seizing the opportunity, ants, too, crawl through that opening and eat what they can.”

— Elif Shafak

285. “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

286. “Sometimes family trauma skips a generation altogether and redoubles its hold on the following one. You may encounter grandchildren who silently shoulder the hurts and sufferings of their grandparents.”

— Elif Shafak

287. “What difference did it make whether they were hurt or happy, right or wrong, when the sun rose and the moon waned just the same, with or without them?”

— Elif Shafak

288. “The civilized world is ahead of us; we have no choice but to catch up.”

— Elif Shafak

289. “The only professed atheist among Leila’s friends, Nalan saw the flesh – and not some abstract concept of the soul – as eternal. Molecules mixed with soil, providing nutrition for plants, those plants were then devoured by animals, and animals by humans, and so, contrary to the assumptions of the majority, the human body was immortal, on a never-ending journey through the cycles of nature. What more could one possibly want from the hereafter?”

— Elif Shafak

290. “How amazing was this ability to achieve plenty by achieving little, to go home empty-handed yet still satisfied at the end of the day!”

— Elif Shafak

291. “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the humans’ hierarchies?”

— Elif Shafak

292. “From a man getting ready to die, he had turned into a man falling in love at a most unexpected time. Suddenly all the pieces that he thought he’d long ago put into place had to be moved. Spirituality, life, family, mortality, faith, and love- he found himself rethinking their meanings again and not wanting to die.”

— Elif Shafak

293. “Today, I think of fanaticism – of any type – as a viral disease.”

— Elif Shafak

294. “When you meet different person, another name, another religion, that’s all good. We learn from difference, not from sameness.”

— Elif Shafak

295. “There were many odd things about human beings. They thought insects were disgusting but felt lucky when a ladybird landed on their fingers. They detested rats but loved squirrels. While they found vultures repulsive, they thought eagles impressive. They despised mosquitoes and flies, but were fond of fire-flies. Even though copper and iron were medicinally important, it was gold that they worshipped instead. They took no notice of the stones under their feet but went mad for polished gems.”

— Elif Shafak

296. “I wish I could look back and say that I have learned to love as much as I loved to learn. But if I like, there could be a cauldron boiling for me in hell tomorrow, and who can assure me tomorrow is not already on my doorstep, now that I am as old as an oak tree, and still not consigned to the grave?”

— Elif Shafak

297. “Those who surround themselves with grovellers who praise everything they do will not forgive the honest man who tells the truth.”

— Elif Shafak

298. “Sanity was a promised land, the Shangri-la she had been deported from as a teenager, and to which she intended to return to one day.”

— Elif Shafak

299. “Peri understood and accepted that some daughters were born with a mission: to fulfill their fathers’ dreams. In doing so, they would also be redeeming their fatherland.”

— Elif Shafak

300. “If enough eyes experienced the same hallucination, it turned into a truth.”

— Elif Shafak