Elif Safak Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Believers are each other's mirrors.

  Elif Safak

  Mirrors, Believer

  9 Copy quote

• The digital world is developing with such force and such a pace that you simply can't ban or control it. People want to be globally connected.

  Elif Safak

  People, Pace, World

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Elif Safak

  Moving, Mean, Past

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  Elif Safak

  Ocean, Bigger, Drops In The Ocean

  7 Copy quote

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

  Elif Safak

  Mind, Like Her, Speak

  5 Copy quote

• I believe in optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect. But my hope is the people, the society, which is ahead of the government.

  Elif Safak

  Believe, Government, Optimism

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  4 Copy quote

• But let us not forget that cities are like human beings. They are born, they go through childhood and adolescence, they grow old, and eventually they die

  Elif Safak

  Cities, Childhood, Forget

  8 Copy quote

• Submission does not mean being weak or passive. It leads to neither fatalism nor capitulation. Just the opposite. True power resides in submission. A power that comes from within. Those who submit to the divine essence of life will live in unperturbed tranquility and peace even when the whole wide world goes through turbulence after turbulence.

  Elif Safak

  Mean, Essence, Opposites

  7 Copy quote

• Identity politics divides us. Fiction connects. One is interested in sweeping generalizations. The other, in nuances. One draws boundaries. The other recognizes no frontiers. Identity politics is made of solid bricks. Fiction is flowing water.

  Elif Safak

  Identity Politics, Water, Fiction

  "The politics of fiction". TED Talk, www.ted.com. July 2010.

  5 Copy quote

• I remember a time when it was ok to make fun of politicians and powerful people. Now, it's not ok anymore. We've forgotten how to laugh.

  Elif Safak

  Fun, Powerful, People

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  5 Copy quote

• 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 Safak

  Children, Father, Ocean

  4 Copy quote

• The Iron Rule of prudence for an Istanbulite Woman: If you are as fragile as a tea glass, either find a way to never encounter burning water and hope to marry an ideal husband or get yourself laid and broken as soon as possible. Alternatively, stop being a tea-glass woman!

  Elif Safak

  Husband, Glasses, Iron

  7 Copy quote

• Cities are erected on spiritual columns. Like giant mirrors, they reflect the hearts of their residents. If those hearts darken and lose faith, cities will lose their glamour.

  Elif Safak

  Spiritual, Heart, Mirrors

  13 Copy quote

• That was the one thing about the rain that likened it to sorrow: You did your best to remain untouched, safe and dry, but if and when you failed, there came a point in which you started seeing the problem less in terms of drops than as an incessant gush, and thereby you decide you might as well get drenched.

  Elif Safak

  Rain, Ifs And, Sorrow

  5 Copy quote

• When I am writing political op-eds, I do think carefully about the impact of my words. When I am writing fiction, it's a different story. In my fiction I am more reckless. I don't care about the real world until I am done with the book.

  Elif Safak

  Real, Book, Writing

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  4 Copy quote

• I see two opposite tendencies in Turkish society: people feel demoralized, they lose the interest in politics and retreat to their private lives; or they become very angry and even more politicized, and radicalized. Both trends are troublesome.

  Elif Safak

  Opposites, Two, People

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  9 Copy quote

• You see, unlike in the movies, there is no THE END sign flashing at the end of books. When I've read a book, I don't feel like I've finished anything. So I start a new one.

  Elif Safak

  Book, Ends, Feels

  5 Copy quote

• Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don't let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, "honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry." Good to remember.

  Elif Safak

  Appreciation, Art, Creativity

  9 Copy quote

• 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 Safak

  Summer, Children, Firefly

  10 Copy quote

• Sometimes I feel I have more faith in European ideals than some of my British or French friends. For them, it's a financial burden. For me, Europe is primarily about values, about fundamental rights, freedom, women's rights.

  Elif Safak

  Rights, Europe, Fundamentals

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  4 Copy quote

• Words are heavy in Turkey, and every writer, every poet and every journalist knows that, because of a word, because of a sentence, because of a tweet or even a retweet, you can be sued, you can be demonized by the media and you can even land in prison.

  Elif Safak

  Media, Land, Turkeys

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  8 Copy quote

• Turkey has a very young, dynamic, curious population. In Europe, Facebook and Twitter are mostly about sharing daily experiences while for Turkish people, social networks are political platforms.

  Elif Safak

  Europe, Turkeys, People

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  7 Copy quote

• I am very worried about this concentration of power, and it's not only because of Erdogan. We have the ballot box, but we don't have the culture of democracy. The government says: You see, we have the majority, we're entitled to do anything we want. But that's not democracy, that's majoritarianism.

  Elif Safak

  Government, Democracy, Majority

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  6 Copy quote

• In a normal democracy, you protect the individual from the excessive power of the state. In Turkey, power elites try to protect the state - as if this state were fragile and needed protection - when in fact, it's too powerful already.

  Elif Safak

  Powerful, Turkeys, Democracy

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  4 Copy quote

• Our politics is very masculine, very aggressive, and it's very polarizing. And the pace of this development has increased in recent years. Erdogan is, in my eyes, the most polarizing politician in recent Turkish political history.

  Elif Safak

  Eye, Years, Political

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  7 Copy quote

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