Top 450 Elif Shafak Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Most of the time he who complains about others is himself at fault.”

— Elif Shafak

352. “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

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

— Elif Shafak

354. “The past is anything but bygone.”

— Elif Shafak

355. “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

356. “A tourist couple – European by the look of them – were taking pictures in the courtyard of the mosque. The woman had covered her head with one of the long scarves provided at the entrance. Someone – perhaps a passer-by – must have warned her that her dress was too short; she had tied another scarf around her waist to cover her legs above the knee. The man, by contrast, had sandals and Bermuda shorts apparently no one had seen as a problem.”

— Elif Shafak

357. “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. in life, unlike in books, we have to weave our stories out of threads as fine as the gossamer veins that run through a butterfly’s wings.”

— Elif Shafak

358. “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

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

— Elif Shafak

360. “The emperor did not hide his disappointment. “Are you the one Majnun has been crazy about? Why, you look so ordinary. What is so special about you?” Layla broke into a smile. “Yes, I am Layla. But you are not Majnun,” she answered. “You have to see me with the eyes of Majnun. Otherwise you could never solve this mystery called love.”

— Elif Shafak

361. “Yesterday I was a river. Tomorrow, I may return as a raindrop.”

— Elif Shafak

362. “Peki ya diger renkler diye sormak istemis. Eflatunlar, turuncular menekseler... Ya diger kumaslar? Pazenler, basmalar, ipekler, kadifeler... Ne demeye siyah beyaza indiriyorduk su alemi, bu kadar cesitli yaratmisken Yaradan?”

— Elif Shafak

363. “The ear never forgets what the heart has heard.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

365. “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

366. “Everyone in this world has some bent or inclination which, if fostered by favourable circumstances, will colour the rest of his life.”

— Elif Shafak

367. “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

368. “A hushed concentration permeated his movements, and his eyes watched her intently, oblivious to everything else, as though she was, and had always been, the centre of the world.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

370. “Time is a songbird, and just like any other songbird it can be taken captive. It can be held prisoner in a cage and for even longer than you might think possible. But time cannot be kept in check in perpetuity. No captivity is forever.”

— Elif Shafak

371. “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

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

— Elif Shafak

373. “You were expected to believe in the State for the same reason you were expected to believe in God: fear. The bourgeoisie, despite its glamour and glitz, resembled a child afraid of its father –the eternal patriarch, the Baba. Amidst uncertainty, unlike their counterparts in Europe, the local bourgeoisie had neither audacity nor autonomy, neither tradition nor memory –squeezed between what they were expected to be and what they wished to be.”

— Elif Shafak

374. “Grown ups are not good at masking their concerns, although they can hide their delights and curiosity surprisingly well. Whereas with children it is the other way round. Children can tactfully mute their anxiety and conceal their sorrow, but will struggle not to express their. This is what growing up means, in some simple way: learning to repress all expressions of pre happiness and joy.”

— Elif Shafak

375. “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

376. “The world would have been a much more interesting place if everyone was given a chance to meet their ancestors at least for an hour in their lifetime.”

— Elif Shafak

377. “The possibility of an immediate and wholesale decimation of civilisation was not half as frightening as the simple realisation that our individual passing had no impact on the order of things, and life would go on just the same with or without us.”

— Elif Shafak

378. “Getting through life as unscathed as possible depended to a large extent on two fundamental principles: knowing the right time to arrive and knowing the right time to leave.”

— Elif Shafak

379. “We never want our parents’ weaknesses to be seen by others. Their failures are our own private affair, a secret we would rather keep to ourselves; when they become public, for everyone’s consumption, we are no longer the children we once were.”

— Elif Shafak

380. “Don’t forget that your mind is a stranger at nights. Don’t talk to strangers.”

— Elif Shafak

381. “Mensur looked rueful. ‘I’ll let you in on a secret. When it comes to the Almighty, grown-ups are no less confused than kids.”

— Elif Shafak

382. “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

383. “Water is the consummate immigrant, trapped in transit, never able to settle.”

— Elif Shafak

384. “This world is erected upon the principle of reciprocity. Neither a drop of kindness nor a speck of evil will remain unreciprocated. Fear not the plots, deceptions, or tricks of other people. If somebody is setting a trap, remember, so is God. He is the biggest plotter. Not even a leaf stirs outside God’s knowledge. Simply and fully believe in that. Whatever God does, He does beautifully.”

— Elif Shafak

385. “I think God comes in many pieces and colors. I can build a peaceful God, all-loving. Or I can build an angry God, punishing. Or maybe I’ll build nothing. God is a Lego set.”

— Elif Shafak

386. “The past is an interpretation. The future is an illusion. The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves through and within us, in endless spirals. Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness. If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.”

— Elif Shafak

387. “Truth cloaks herself.’ ‘Why would truth need to cloak herself?’ ‘Because if she were to walk about naked, people would stone her in the streets.”

— Elif Shafak

388. “From her he had learned two fundamental things about love: first, that unlike what the romantics so pompously argued, love was more a gradual course than a sudden blossoming at first sight, and second, that he was capable of loving.”

— Elif Shafak

389. “The creature who arrived at your door, having bitten the hand that fed him all along, would not hesitate to sink his teeth into your flesh once he was inside.”

— Elif Shafak

390. “Arthur is beginning to suspect that civilization is the name we give to what little we have salvaged from a loss that no one wants to remember. Triumphs are erected upon the jerry-built scaffolding of brutalities untold, heroic legends spun from the thread of aggressions and atrocities.”

— Elif Shafak

391. “When something needs to be said, I’ll say it even if the whole world grabs me by the neck and tells me to keep quiet.”

— Elif Shafak

392. “Rome, the city where memories were chiseled in marble.”

— Elif Shafak

393. “If you cannot find a reason to love the life you are living, do not pretend to love the life you are living.”

— Elif Shafak

394. “For the king knows that in order to dominate other cultures, you must capture not only their lands, crops and assets but also their collective imagination, their shared memories.”

— Elif Shafak

395. “Doubts are good. It means you are alive and searching. One does not become a believer overnight. He thinks he is a believer; then something happens in his life and he becomes an unbeliever, after that, he becomes a believer again and then an unbeliever again, and so on. Until we reach a certain stage, we constantly waver. This is the only way forward. At each new step, we come closer to the Truth.”

— Elif Shafak

396. “Behind all hardships was a larger scheme. I couldn’t make it out clearly, but I could feel it with my whole heart.”

— Elif Shafak

397. “To whom does the object belong – the itinerant bards who recited the poem, travelling from city to city; the king who ordered it to be put in writing; the scribe who laboured in setting it down; the librarian who scrupulously stored it; the archaeologist who unearthed it centuries later; the museum that will keep it safe – or does it belong only to the people of this land, and, if so, will minorities like the Yazidis ever be counted amongst them?”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

399. “She regarded her memory as a graveyard; segments of her life were buried there, lying in separate graves, and she had no intention of reviving them.”

— Elif Shafak

400. “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