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

Elif Shafak Quotes

The silence diffused outwards into the air; spreading and congealing into an ugly and uneven thickness, stagnant like algae forming on a late-summer pond.

— Elif Shafak

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

By and large over time, pain turns into grief, grief turns into silence, and silence turns into lonesomeness, as vast and bottomless as the dark oceans.

— Elif Shafak

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

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

There are no coincidences in the universe, only signs. Can you see the signs?

— Elif Shafak

The past is a trunk in the loft, crammed with scraps, some valuable, but many entirely useless. Although I’d prefer to keep it closed, the slight breeze throws it open, and, before I know it, all the contents have flown everywhere. I put them back. One by one. The memories, the bad and the good. Yet the trunk always snaps open again when I least expect it.

— Elif Shafak

The person who is openly loved by someone who is admired by so many people is bound to draw the envy, if not the hatred, of others.

— Elif Shafak

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

The faces we see in the mirrors are not really ours. Just reflections. We can find our true selves only in the faces of the Other... We strive for the opposite: to multiple everyone into a hundred belongings, a thousand beating hearts. If I am a human, I should be big enough to feel for people everywhere.

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

In many ways the twenty-first century is not that different from the thirteenth century. Both will be recorded in history as times of unprecedented religious clashes, cultural misunderstandings, and a general sense of insecurity and fear of the Other. At times like these, the need for love is greater than ever.

— Elif Shafak

Because I was always in that limbo between yes and no. No stranger to faith, no stranger to doubt. Undecided. Vacillating. Never self-confident. Maybe it made me who I am, all that uncertainty.

— Elif Shafak

Sometimes it is necessary to destroy all attachments in order to win over your self.

— Elif Shafak

Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome.

— Elif Shafak

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

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

— Elif Shafak

The dervish calmly responded, “Yes, but I know myself, and believe me, it would have been much worse if it were the other way round.” As long as I knew myself, I would be all right. Whosoever knows himself, knows the One.

— Elif Shafak

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

— Elif Shafak

She had so much love to give and yet no one demanding it.

— Elif Shafak
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