134 Quotes by Elif Şafak

I spent my entire childhood observing people. I still do.

For me, writing stories is one way of feeling connected to the universe and God.

God is the biggest storyteller, and when we create stories, we connect with him and with each other across cultural, religious and gender boundaries.

I write with humour about sadness, to introduce an element of sweet to the sour, a bit like Turkish food.

I write as if I were drunk. It is a process of intuition rather than placing myself above my story like a puppeteer pulling strings. For me, it's a scary, chaotic process over which I have little control. Words demand other words, characters resist me.

After the Ankara bombings on October 10, people were asked to hold a minute of silence, but many refused. Our society can't even unite in grief to honor the victims. We've lost our empathy. That's maybe the worst.

Yeah, we should all line up along the Bosphorus Bridge and puff as hard as we can to shove this city in the direction of the West. If that doesn't work, we'll try the other way, see if we can veer to the East. It's no good to be in between. International politics does not appreciate ambiguity.

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!

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.