Top 380 Elif Shafak Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “For the same reason, he believed that love had nothing to do with “plans for tomorrow” or “memories of yesterday.” Love could only be here and now.”

— Elif Shafak

304. “I have come to believe that if there is one shape that reaches out to all of us, it is the dome. That is where all the distinctions disappear and every single sound, whether of joy or sorrow, merges into one huge silence of all-encompassing love. When I think of the world this way, I feel dazed and disoriented, and cannot tell any longer where the future begins and the past ends, where the West falls and the East rises.”

— Elif Shafak

305. “Humeyra believed there was something markedly similar about the experience of being overweight and being prone to melancholy. In both cases society blamed the sufferer. No other medical condition was regarded this way.”

— Elif Shafak

306. “Once again she had spent all her monthly savings on books! She was a true bookworm, not a promising feature at all given that it had zero value in the eyes of a boy.”

— Elif Shafak

307. “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

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

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

310. “The child had indeed shut up but all the questions that had accumulated on his tongue circulated in his mouth, moved through the passages of his nose and climbed up from there to tickle into his teardrop ducts, so in his moss green pupils, curious, insistent, accusing sparks of questions continued to light up and fade away like fireflies flitting about on summer nights.”

— Elif Shafak

311. “The past is nothing but a shackle we need to get rid of. Such an excruciating burden. If only I could have no past – you know, if only I could be a nobody, start from point zero and just remain there forever. As light as a feather...”

— Elif Shafak

312. “Europeans... Westerners... Russians... Arabs... If you were to get to know them, not as a category, but individually, then you would see how we are all, more or less, flesh and mind, the same. We can only recognize ourselves in the faces of... the Other.”

— Elif Shafak

313. “If a stone hits a river, the river will treat it as yet another commotion in its already tumultuous course. Nothing unusual. Nothing unmanageable. If a stone hits a lake, however, the lake will never be the same again.”

— Elif Shafak

314. “But absolutism of all kinds is a weakness. Absolute atheism or absolute theism. To my mind, they are equally problematic. My task is to inject the faithless with a dose of faith and the believers with a dose of skepticism.”

— Elif Shafak

315. “When I asked him about this, he said one should keep the intellect satisfied and yet be careful not to spoil it.”

— Elif Shafak

316. “At night we heard the howling of the gale and it brought to mind things untamed and unbidden, things within each of us that we were not yet ready to face, let alone comprehend.”

— Elif Shafak

317. “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

318. “I have often wondered what resides in an accent. Is it a presence – an identity, a trajectory, a history? Or is it rather an absence – an estrangement, a withdrawal, a blank space refusing to be filled?”

— Elif Shafak

319. “In an age of deeply embedded bigotries and clashes, he stood for a universal spirituality, opening his doors to people of all backgrounds.”

— Elif Shafak

320. “Matrimony might be a fleeting folly that tricked you into believing that it would be forever, but it was harder to appreciate the humor when you were not the one who ended it.”

— Elif Shafak

321. “In the sheltered bosom of faith, one found the answers by letting go of the questions; one advanced by surrendering.”

— Elif Shafak

322. “That is what the past was, that which you could not get rid of. The past did not resemble the crumbs spilled over a rug. You could not shake them out from open windows.”

— Elif Shafak

323. “The past is anything but bygone.”

— Elif Shafak

324. “It always made me both immensely sad and elated to listen to a town sleep, wondering what sorts of stories were being lived behind closed doors, what sorts of stories I could have lived had I chosen another path.”

— Elif Shafak

325. “When I met you, Peri, I thought this girl doesn’t know it but she carries the three passion of Bertrand Russel: the longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable compassion for the suffering of mankind.”

— Elif Shafak

326. “If only humans could live exposed to the skies, open and unafraid, watching the stars and being watched by them, with nothing to hide.”

— Elif Shafak

327. “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

328. “A gust of wind blew in from the balcony, fluttering the curtains. For an instant, it was as if there was a new presence in the room. A barely perceptible tickle, like a stray hair on the back of one’s neck. But it grew stronger, and they could feel its power, its pull. Either they had stepped into some invisible realm, or another realm was seeping into theirs.”

— Elif Shafak

329. “Did she ever love me as much as much as I love her? I don’t think so. But I know she did love me in her own self-centered and self-destructive way.”

— Elif Shafak

330. “Resentment is a cage, talent is a captured bird.”

— Elif Shafak

331. “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

332. “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

333. “How irresponsible of Him to allow terrible things to happen o those who didn’t deserve it. Could God see and hear through prison walls and across cell bars? If He could not, He was not all-powerful. If He could, and still did nothing to help those in need, He was not merciful. Either way, He was not what He claimed to be. He was an impostor.”

— Elif Shafak

334. “How could they be so certain of the superiority of their truths when they knew so little, if anything at all, about other cultures, other philosophies, other ways of thinking?”

— Elif Shafak

335. “How could meditation help you to quieten your mind when you needed to quieten your mind in order to meditate?”

— Elif Shafak

336. “Granting an equal vote to the ignorant is like handing matches to a toddler.”

— Elif Shafak

337. “They send me leaflets, booklets, tapes. ‘Let us help your injured soul by shedding the Light upon your darkest hours’ Pompous words! They pretend their message is for all humanity but are ready to burn at the stake anyone who doesn’t go along with them. Still, they feel affection for the likes of me. They just can’t get enough of us. So strong is their desire to correct sinners and score points in God’s eyes. We’re their tickets to heaven. We, the scumbags of the earth- the wicked, the fallen.”

— Elif Shafak

338. “There was something frighteningly dangerous in the expectation that someone had the answer to most of our questions, and that through that person was a shortcut to all that was left unsolved henceforth.”

— Elif Shafak

339. “Truth is a rhizome – an underground plant stem with lateral shoots. You need to dig deep to reach it and, once unearthed, you have to treat it with respect.”

— Elif Shafak

340. “Most of the time he who complains about others is himself at fault.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

342. “Lately she had decided to purge certain words from her vocabulary and now that she recalled that decision, why not start with the word shame.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

344. “Did subsequent generations ineluctably start where previous ones had given up, absorbing all of their disappointments and unfulfilled dreams? Was the present moment a mere continuation of the past, every word an afterword to what had already been said or left unsaid?”

— Elif Shafak

345. “The Germans invited you to their country to work, not to mingle, and expected you to leave as soon as you were no longer needed. Adapting to their ways was like trying to embrace a hedgehog. There might be a secret tenderness, a gentle core underneath, but you couldn’t pass the sharp needles to tap into it.”

— Elif Shafak

346. “She left her breast behind, the breast that covered her heart. And walked away.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

348. “It seems to me, more and more, we are pain, and hurt, and loneliness covered with skin.”

— Elif Shafak

349. “What we are going through is also a crisis of meanings.”

— Elif Shafak

350. “Creeping in menacingly, ticking like a pendulum clock that never winds down, it takes hold of you faster when you are part of an enclosed, homogenous unit.”

— Elif Shafak