Elif Shafak Quotes

Whatever falls from the sky above, thou shall not curse it. That includes the rain

I hunt everywhere for a life worth living and a knowledge worth knowing. Having roots nowhere, I have everywhere to go.

Just as clay needs to go through intense heat to become strong, Love can only be perfected in pain.

Resentment is a cage, talent is a captured bird.

The past is anything but bygone

Politics divide us. Fiction connects.

The water that scares you rejuvenates me. For me I can swim, and swim I shall.

They didn't hear her , but it was enough that GOD did

How terrible it was to still be mentally and emotionally attached to someone from whom you have been physically separated.

Naked female bodies with their legs apart, a granny and her sagging tits. Terrified,

There is no together anymore. Once a pomegranate breaks and all its seeds scatter in differetnt directions, you cannot put it back together.

Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all.

Don't underestimate the good in you

Zhadi. Of admirers and foes, she had plenty. They said she

If you don't know what to do with an answer, don't ask the question.

(T)here are friendships in this world that seem incomprehensible to ordinary people, but are in fact conduits to deeper wisdom and insight.

As well. One of them was quite pesky, insisting

And were you able to find Him?" I inquired.
A shadow crossed his face as the dervish noded and said.
"Indeed, He was with me all along.

Believers are each other's mirrors.

But now she wasn't sure if she could concentrate on a subject as irrelevant to her life as Sufism and a time as distant as the thirteenth century.

No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey a journey within.

Talent is a favor of the divine. To perfect it one must work hard.

Let love take hold of you and change you. At first through its presence then through its absence.

But the story didn't end there. Almost 800 years later, the spirits of Shams & Rumi are still alive today,whirling amid us somewhere ...

Where there is love, there is bound to be heartache.

Male writers are thought of as "writers" first and then "men". As for female writers, they are first "feamle" and only then "writers".

Love exists within each of us from the moment we are born and waits to be discovered from then on.

Perhaps it took a stranger to make a woman like her speak her mind.

Since when is being a rotten drunkard a symbol of freedom?

That is why we can suicidally fall in love with others but can rarely reciprocate the love of those suicidally in love with us.

The boy caught an almost imperceptible movement, the insatiable greed of maggots crawling inside human flesh.

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.

What difference did it make whether they were hurt or happy, right or wrong, when the sun rose and the moon waned just the same, with or without them?

Moments are born and moments die. For new experiences to come to life, old ones need to wither away.

In love, boundaries are blurred

There were different ways of growing old, perhaps. Some withered first in body, others in mind, yet others in soul.

Isn't connecting people to distant lands and culture one of the strengths of good literature?

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

We're all what we are. And we're all subject to change. It is a journey from here to there.

A saint belongs to all humanity.

Because time is a drop in the ocean, and you cannot measure off one drop against another to see which one is bigger, which one is smaller.

Stop running after the waves. Let the sea come to you.

Beyond wildest dreams, strange things happened to people when they were ready for the unusual and the unexpected.

Even a speck of love should not go unappreciated, because, as Rumi said, love is the water of life.

The Path to the Truth is a labor of the heart, not of the head. Make your heart your primary guide! Not your mind.

The past lives within the present, and our ancestors breathe through our children.

When you have both eyes closed to the world, a third eye opens in your heart.

We cannot abandon this rabbit hole for fear of a traumatic encounter with our own culture.

But Istanbul is a city of easy forgettings. Things are written in water over there, except the works of my master, which are written in stone.

In love all boundaries are blurred.

It was always like this. When you spoke the truth, they hated you. The more you talked about love, the more they hated you.

Home isn't where it used to be. Home is anywhere you hang your head.

Article Five: If you have no reason or ability to accomplish anything, then just practice the art of becoming.

Never underestimate the power of envy.

When asked his name, he introduced himself as Shams of Tabriz and said he was a wandering dervish searching for God high and low.

There were many legends about these rocks and behind every legend a story of forbidden love.

Intense heat to become strong, Love can only be perfected

If you want to destroy something, be it a blemish, acne or the human soul, all you need to do is surround it with walls.

Speak less, mature quicker!

Only humans have consciousness. It's divine order. That's why Allah hold us humans responsible fir our behavior.

Religious people are so confident of having God by their side that they think they are superior to everyone else

People who would refuse to share their bread shared their insanity instead.

-Three Daughters of Eve

there is a thin line between losing yourself in God and losing your mind. Two

Mourning is like virginity. You should give it to the one who deserves it most.

May love find you when you least expect, where you least expect.

They say there is a thin line between losing yourself in God and losing your mind.

(N)ever apportion blame. How can there be opponents or rivals or even "others" when there is no "self" in the first place?

Some cities you go to because you want to; some cities you go to because they want you to.

A broken heart hides treasures." As

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.

Once there was, once there wasn't, God's creature were as plentiful as grains and talking too much was a sin.

Faith is only a word if there is no love at its center, so flaccid and lifeless, vague and hollow - not anything you could truly feel.

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

Life often felt unjust, but death was the biggest injustice.

For apprentices everywhere - no one told us that love was the hardest craft to master

Not every word is fit for every ear.

Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.

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.

Either grant me the bliss of the ignorant or give me the strength to bear the knowledge.

Never had it occurred to him that you could deceive the person you held dear. It was his first lesson in the complexity of love.

On the Sufi path, first you discover the art of being alone amid the crowd. Next you discover the crowd within your solitude - the voices inside you.

Sometimes, for the soul to thrive, the heart needs to be broken, son.

Choice and confusion were conjoined twins

Love can only be perfected in pain.

It's odd how faces, solid and visible as they are, evaporate, while words, made of breath, stay.

Be thankful for every thorn that others might throw at you. It is a sign that you will soon be showered in roses

Religions are like rivers: they all flow to the same sea.

Whatever you do, she would have said, don't hurt anyone and don't let anyone hurt you. Be neither a heartbreaker nor heartbroken.

Love is the water of life. Lover is a soul of fire.
The universe turns differently when the fire loves water,

Does what we do in life matter so much? Or is it what we don't do that carries weight?

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

Rebelliousness is not a good quality in a novice.

Irrationality is part of everyday rationale

Three scents accompany my memories of this place: cut wood, poppy-seed bread, and the soft, crisp smell of snow.

No eye sees so clear and sharp as the eye of love.

What is the point of roaming the world when it's the same misery everywhere?

Love is the reason. Love is the goal.

I thank Him for all the things He has both given and denied me, for only He knows what is best for me.

About the great preacher. I wanted to see him through foreign eyes, kind and unkind, loving and unloving, before I looked on him with my own.

If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.