246 Quotes by Elif Shafak

... do not ask yourself which kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, Eastern or Western..Divisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, definitions''.

Before passing through the gates of a town I've never visited, I take a minute to salute its saints - the dead and the living, the known and the hidden. Never in my life have I arrived at a new place without getting the blessing of its saints first. It makes no difference to me whether that place belongs to Muslims, Christians, or Jews. I believe that the saints are beyond such trivial nominal distinctions. A saint belongs to all humanity.

The impression she left on others and her self-perception had been sewn into a whole so consummate that she could no longer tell how much of each day was defined by what was wished upon her and how much of it was what she really wanted.--Three Daughters of Eve.

Readying for prayer was like shoving into a cupboard all the junk and clutter, before God came to visit the house of her mind.

Timpul e o picătură în ocean și nu poți măsura picăturile ca să vezi care e mai mare și care e mai mică.

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.

Learn the truth, my friend, but be careful not to make a fetish out of your truths.

Izgubio se među knjigama kako bi pronašao sebe.

Doubts are good. It means you are alive and searching. One does not become a believer overnight. He thinks he is a believer; then something happens in his life and he becomes an unbeliever, after that, he becomes a believer again and then an unbeliever again, and so on. Until we reach a certain stage, we constantly waver. This is the only way forward. At each new step, we come closer to the Truth.