Elif Safak Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• We were all created in His image, and yet we were each created different and unique. No two people are alike. No two hearts beat to the same rhythm. If God had wanted everyone to be the same. He would have made it so. Therefore, disrespecting differences and imposing your thoughts on others is tantamount to disrespecting God’s holy scheme.

  Elif Safak

  Heart, Unique, Differences

  "The Forty Rules of Love". Book by Elif Safak, 2011.

  25 Copy quote

• To each his own way and his own prayer. God does not take us at our word. He looks deep into our hearts. It is not the ceremonies or rituals that make a difference, but whether our hearts are sufficiently pure or not.

  Elif Safak

  Prayer, Heart, Differences

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• How can you blame others for disrespecting you when you think of yourself as unworthy of respect?

  Elif Safak

  Thinking, Blame, Think Of You

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• God is a meticulous clockmaker. So precise is His order that everything on earth happens in its own time. Neither a minute late nor a minute early. And for everyone without exception, the clock works accurately. For each there is a time to love and a time to die.

  Elif Safak

  Order, Earth, Clock

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

  Elif Safak

  Waiting, Moments, Born

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• The words that come out of our mouths do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time.

  Elif Safak

  Space, Mouths, Infinite

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• 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 and 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 Safak

  Mistake, Acceptance, Past

  92 Copy quote

• I like to borrow a metaphor from the great poet and mystic Rumi who talks about living like a drawing compass. One leg of the compass is static. It is fixed and rooted in a certain spot. Meanwhile, the other leg draws a huge wide circle around the first one, constantly moving. Just like that, one part of my writing is based in Istanbul. It has strong local roots. Yet at the same time the other part travels the whole wide world, feeling connected to several cities, cultures, and peoples.

  Elif Safak

  Strong, Moving, Writing

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

  Elif Safak

  Land, People, Culture

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• Hell is in the here and now. So is Heaven. Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven, as they are both present inside us 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 Safak

  Dream, Falling In Love, Hate

  8 Copy quote

• One night, a group of moths gathered on a shelf watching a burning candle. Puzzled by the nature of the light, they sent one of their members to go and check on it. The scouting moth circled the candle several times and came back with a description: The light was bright. Then a second moth went to examine it. He, too, came back with an observation: The light was hot. Finally a third moth volunteered to go. When he approached the candle he didn't stop like his friends had done, but flew straight into the flame. He was consumed there and then, and only he understood the nature of the light.

  Elif Safak

  Night, Light, Flames

  "Black Milk: On the Conflicting Demands of Writing, Creativity, and Motherhood". Book by Elif Shafak, 2007.

  99 Copy quote

• We're born into a certain family, nation, class. But if we have no connection whatsoever with the worlds beyond the one we take for granted, then we too run the risk of drying up inside. Our imagination might shrink; our hearts might dwindle, and our humanness might wither if we stay for too long inside our cultural cocoons. Our friends, neighbors, colleagues, family - if all the people in our inner circle resemble us, it means we are surrounded with our mirror image.

  Elif Safak

  Running, Mean, Heart

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

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

  Elif Safak

  Art, Practice, Becoming

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• Believers are each other's mirrors.

  Elif Safak

  Mirrors, Believer

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• If you want to destroy something in this life, be it an acne, a blemish or the human soul, all you need to do is to surround it with thick walls. It will dry up inside.

  Elif Safak

  Wall, Motivation, Inspiration

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

  77 Copy quote

• A saint belongs to all humanity.

  Elif Safak

  Humanity, Saint

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• How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves. If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we.

  Elif Safak

  Mean, Reflection, Compassion

  52 Copy quote

• How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.

  Elif Safak

  Real, Love Is, Names

  38 Copy quote

• Real filth is the one inside. The rest simply washes off. There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul. You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart.

  Elif Safak

  Real, Heart, Water

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• What i’m saying is, my friends, one ought to be able to let go. If a path does not please us, instead of insisting on going that specific way, of making our selfishness the guide, we ought to forsake. The books we cannot write, the films we cannot shoot, the projects we cannot develop, the jobs we cannot pursue and the people who no longer love us. Being able to let go, at times, is the most beautiful of all!

  Elif Safak

  Beautiful, Letting Go, Jobs

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• I slept peacefully that night, feeling exultant and determined. Little did I know that I was making the most common and the most painful mistake women have made all throughout the ages: to naively think that with their love they can change the man they love.

  Elif Safak

  Mistake, Night, Men

  25 Copy quote

• I see what you mean. It must be a huge relief, and an easy way out, to think the devil is always outside of us. (…) we would stop looking for Sheitan outside and instead focus on ourselves. What we need is sincere self-examination. Not being on the watch for the faults of others.” (p. 257).

  Elif Safak

  Mean, Thinking, Self

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• Ways of loving from a distance, mating without even touching-Amor platonicus! The ladder of love one is expected to climb higher and higher, elating the Self and the Other. Plato clearly regards any actual physical contact as corrupt and ignoble because he thinks the true goal of Eros is beauty. Is there no beauty in sex? Not according to Plato. He is after `more sublime pursuits.' But if you ask me, I think Plato's problem, like those of many others, was that he never got splendidly laid.

  Elif Safak

  Sex, Plato, Distance

  36 Copy quote

• We're stuck. We're stuck between the East and the West. Between the past and the future. On the one hand there are the secular modernists, so proud of the regime they constructed, you cannot breathe a critical word. They've got the army and half of the state on their side. On the other hand there are the conventional traditionalist, so infatuated with the Ottoman past, you cannot breathe a critical word. They've got the general public and the remaining half of the state on their side.

  Elif Safak

  Army, Past, Hands

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• Perhaps this is why lunatics have a harder time dating, not because they are off the wall but because it is hard to find soemone who is willing to date so many people in one person.

  Elif Safak

  Wall, People, Dating

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