Top 450 Elif Shafak Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 9 of 10

401. “Better to be a gentle soul than one consumed by anger, resentment and vengeance. Anyone can wage war, but maintaining peace is a difficult thing.”

— Elif Shafak

402. “Seven days a week we are forced to contend with bleak feelings, thought rarely do we have the time or the will to give them serious consideration.”

— Elif Shafak

403. “God created sufferings so that joy might appear through its opposite. Things become manifest through opposites. Since God has no opposite, He remains hidden.”

— Elif Shafak

404. “She wants to excuse herself from a world where she often feels like an outsider, a confused and clumsy latecomer, an accidental guest who walked in through the wrong door at the wrong time.”

— Elif Shafak

405. “If there was a God up there, He must be laughing His head off at a human race capable of making atomic bombs and building artificial intelligence, but still uncomfortable with their own mortality and unable to sort out what to do with their dead. How pathetic it was to try to relegate death to the periphery of life when death was at the centre of everything.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

407. “When the first wave arrived, barely touching her toes, it was so light and translucent a ripple that you might be forgiven for thinking it insignificant, that it would vanish soon, leaving no trace. But then followed another wave, and the next one, rising as far as her ankles, and the one after that covering her knees, and before you knew it she was immersed in liquid pain, up to her neck, drowning.”

— Elif Shafak

408. “Hell is in the here and now. So is heaven. Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven, as they are both present inside this very moment. Every time we fall in love, we ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy, or fight someone, we tumble straight into the fires of hell.”

— Elif Shafak

409. “Grief is a swallow,′ he said. ‘One day you wake up and you think it’s gone, but it’s only migrated to some other place, warming its feathers. Sooner or later, it will return and perch in your heart again.”

— Elif Shafak

410. “There are extraordinary people who appear unexpectedly on our paths, and just as suddenly, they disappear, leaving their indelible marks and a sense of regret. Brief and bright, like a match striking a flame in the dark, they heat the damp kindling of out hearts and then they are gone.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

413. “Humans are strange that way, full of contradictions. It’s as if they need to hate and exclude as much as they need to love and embrace.”

— Elif Shafak

414. “Hatred is a poison served in three cups. The first is when people despise those they desire – because they want to have them in their possession. It’s all out of hubris! The second is when people loathe those they do not understand. It’s all out of fear! Then there is the third kind – when people hate those they have hurt.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

416. “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

417. “We learn to accept there’ll always be something amiss, something broken, and unless we are kind to ourselves it won’t change, this feeling of incompleteness.”

— Elif Shafak

418. “Article Two: The overwhelming majority of people never think and those who think never become the overwhelming majority. Choose your side.”

— Elif Shafak

419. “Once we have witnessed the suffering, the injustice, the immorality, what do we do next? Do we tell our eyes to forget what they have seen, tell our mouths to not whisper a word, tell our hearts to go numb, slowly? Or de we choose to speak up, speak out, connect, organise, mobilese and demand justice until justice is served?”

— Elif Shafak

420. “It is perhaps easier to justify the end of a relationship – both to yourself and to others – when there is a definite, tangible cause, no matter how painful. But it is harder to grasp the gradual evaporation of love, a loss so slow and subtle as to be barely detectable, until it is fully gone.”

— Elif Shafak

421. “East, West, South or North makes little difference. No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey, a journey within. If you travel within, you’ll travel the whole wide world and beyond.”

— Elif Shafak

422. “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

423. “Father, I am from a different egg than your other children. Think of me as a duckling raised by hens. I am not a domestic bird destined to spend his life in a chicken coop. The water that scares you rejuvenates me. For unlike you I can swim, and swim I shall. The ocean is my homeland. If you are with me, come to the ocean. If not, stop interfering with me and go back to the chicken coop.”

— Elif Shafak

424. “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

— Elif Shafak

425. “Nalan thought that one of the endless tragedies of human history was that pessimists were better at surviving than optimists, which mean that, logically speaking, humanity carried the genes of people who did not believe in humanity.”

— Elif Shafak

426. “It doesn’t occur to him that we are drawn to the kind of stories that are already present within us, germinating and pushing their way through to the surface, like seeds ready to sprout at the first hint of sun.”

— Elif Shafak

427. “One of the rules says, You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue, or church. But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is, there is only one place to look for Him: in the heart of a true lover. There is no one who has lived after seeing Him, just like there is no one who has died after seeing Him. Whoever finds Him will remain with Him forever.”

— Elif Shafak

428. “Home is where your absence is felt, the echo of your voice kept alive, no matter how long you have been away or how far you may have strayed, a place that still beats with the pulse of your heart.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

430. “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

431. “But you’re mistaken about me. If you only knew how difficult it is to be calm and composed. If you only knew, it takes a fierce fight inside to remain peaceful on the outside.”

— Elif Shafak

432. “It is never too late to ask yourself, ‘Am I ready to change the life I am living? Am I ready to change within?’ Even if a single day in your life is the same as the day before, it surely is a pity. At every moment and with each new breath, one should be renewed and renewed again. There is only one way to be born into a new life: to die before death.”

— Elif Shafak

433. “Because you are so desperate to win the approval of others, you’ll never get rid of their criticisms, no matter how hard you try.” I.”

— Elif Shafak

434. “Words are like birds, when you publish books you are setting caged birds free. They can go wherever they please. They can fly over the highest walls and across vast distances, settling in mansions of gentry, in farmsteads and laborers’ cottages alike. You never know whom those words will reach, whose hearts will succumb to their sweet songs.”

— Elif Shafak

435. “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

436. “You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue or church. But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is, there is only one place to look for Him: in the heart of a true lover.”

— Elif Shafak

437. “One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it is left behind.”

— Elif Shafak

438. “I don’t think I’ll ever become a real writer and that’s quite all right now. I’ve reached an age at which I’m more at peace with my limitations and failures.”

— Elif Shafak

439. “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

440. “One thing that has helped me personally in the past was to stop interfering with the people around me and getting frustrated when I couldn’t change them. Instead of intrusion or passivity, may I suggest submission? Some people make the mistake of confusing “submission” with “weakness,” whereas it is anything but. Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe, including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend.”

— Elif Shafak

441. “What happens after catastrophes? Those who survive nurse their broken hearts and start all over again, as one always does, as one always must.”

— Elif Shafak

442. “In a world that is ever shifting and unpredictable, I’ve come to believe it is totally fine not to feel fine. It is perfectly okay not be okay. If truth be told, if from time to time, you do not catch yourself overwhelmed and exhausted, or even incandescent, maybe you are not really following what is going on – here, there and everywhere.”

— Elif Shafak

443. “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

444. “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

445. “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

446. “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

447. “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

448. “Books, like paper lanterns, provide us with a light amidst the fog.”

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

450. “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