Top 380 Elif Shafak Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “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

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

— Elif Shafak

303. “It is not up to us to judge and measure each other’s devoutness.”

— Elif Shafak

304. “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

305. “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

306. “As a storyteller I am less interested in generalizations than in undertones and nuances. These may not be visible at first glance, but they are out there, lurking beneath the surface, durable and distinct.”

— Elif Shafak

307. “Her mother had once told her that childhood was a big, blue wave that lifted you up, carried you forth and, just when you thought it would last forever, vanished from sight.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

311. “Since when is being a rotten drunkard a symbol of freedom?”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

314. “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

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

— Elif Shafak

316. “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

317. “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

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

— Elif Shafak

319. “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

320. “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

321. “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

322. “Whatever you hate in me, does it not also exist in you?”

— Elif Shafak

323. “If you carry a sword, you obey the sword, not the other way round. Nobody can hold a weapon and keep their hands clear of blood at the same time.”

— Elif Shafak

324. “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

325. “Peri loved her father’s tales. She had grown up with them. Yet the melancholy with which they were infused pierced her soul, like a splinter under her skin that had become an organic part of her. Sometimes she imagined she had splinters all over – both in her body and in the recesses of her mind.”

— Elif Shafak

326. “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

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

— Elif Shafak

328. “So it’s not possible to forget everything. What we call the eyes may succeed in forgetting all of what they’ve seen in life, but it’s impossible to stop thinking about having been seen. If there are no witnesses a person can forget the past. If they are witnesses everything changes. Their every look is an accusation, their existence an obstacle to forgetfulness.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

330. “Little did he know, back then, that the worth of one’s faith depended not on how solid and strong it was, but on how many times one would lose it and still be able to get it back.”

— Elif Shafak

331. “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

332. “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

333. “I am not saying that fiction has the magnitude of an earthquake, but when we are inside a good novel we leave our cozy, small apartments behind and, through fictional characters, find ourselves getting to know people we had never met before, and perhaps had even disliked as our Others.”

— Elif Shafak

334. “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

335. “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

336. “He would never have dared to call this thing he felt for Mihrimah love, and yet when it was uttered, unveiled, by someone else, he carefully picked up the word and hugged it to his chest, not willing to let go.”

— Elif Shafak

337. “No one should try to philosophize on the nature of humanity until they had worked in a public toilet for a couple of weeks and.”

— Elif Shafak

338. “Some day this pain will be useful to you.”

— Elif Shafak

339. “They didn’t hear her, but it was enough that GOD did.”

— Elif Shafak

340. “Every human being is a work in progress that is slowly but inexorably moving toward perfection. We are each an unfinished work of art both waiting and striving to be completed. God deals with each of us separately because humanity is a fine art of skilled penmanship where every single dot is equally important for the entire picture.”

— Elif Shafak

341. “She had come to learn that the English had an indirect way of expressing their opinions. Unlike the Turks, they did not communicate resentment through resentment or anger through double anger. No, there were layers to their conversation; the deepest discomfort could be conveyed with a reticent smile. They complemented, when in truth they wished to denounce; they clothed their criticisms in cryptic praise.”

— Elif Shafak

342. “I’ll come to the island,’ Ada said, a new note in her voice. ‘I just want to meet islanders, like myself.”

— Elif Shafak

343. “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

344. “In that moment Jahan understood that life was the sum of the choices one did not make; the paths yearned for but not taken.”

— Elif Shafak

345. “I can tell you one thig about humans: they will react to the disappearance of a species the way they react to everything else – by putting themselves at the center of the universe.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

347. “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

348. “Someone who plants in your heart a lifetime of things so pleasant yet so minute you don’t realize how much you have come to depend on them until you lose them all.”

— Elif Shafak

349. “But having spent my whole life regretting the things I failed to do, I see no harm in doing something regrettable for a change.”

— Elif Shafak

350. “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