Elif Shafak quotes:

You dervishes are as crazy as rats in a pantry. Especially you wandering types. All day long you fast and pray and walk under the scorching sun. No wonder you start hallucinating - your brain is fried!

Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.

Believers are each other's mirrors.

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.

Derya icre yuzup de deryayi kavrayamayan baliklar gibiydiler, ortamin bir parcasi halini almislardi."

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.

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.

It never took her long to darken any conversation, as from birth she was inclined to see misery in each and every story, and to fabricate some when there was none.

Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process

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

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.

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