Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Elif Safak

French-born Turkish Writer, Political Scientist, awarded Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters

"Rule number forty - Ella said slowly. - Life without love is not life. Do not ask for what you seek love, spiritual or material, divine or earthly, east or west. You begin to share things arises new and new division. Love has no labels, no definitions. It just is what it is Love is living water. A lover is a soul of fire! world revolves otherwise love when the fire water. - Elif Shafak , The Forty Rules of Love"

"Sam know why - I said with a smile. - Spiritual development covers our entire consciousness and not its individual countries. Rule number thirty-two: Between you and God should not stand anything. Neither the imams or priests or rabbis or other guardians of morality or religious leadership. Neither spiritual teachers, or even faith. Believe in its values ​​and rules, but not impose them on others never. If you repeatedly break the hearts of the people, whatever religious duty to perform, it is useless. Beware of any idolatry idols because clouding your vision. Let us be your guide and only God. Learn the truth, my friend, but be careful not to become a fetish truths."

"Stop running after the waves. Let the sea come to you."

"Suck few pills of happiness. You know what they're called? Bottled smiles."

"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."

"Tell me, if you teach someone the alphabet, how can you stop him from reading? When one has tasted the elixir of love, how can she not thirst for it? Once you have seen yourself through your beloved's eyes, you're not the same person any longer. I was blind all this time, and now that my eyes are open, i'm afraid of light. But i don't want to live like a mole. Not Anymore."

"Sometimes ... yaralanıveririz so suddenly. But every wound will heal itself. Eventually heals, top off. Stored in the eyes. Does not want to be seen because there is no wound. As long as they advocate the wound pupils. Because if pupils are injured, you cannot look the world in the same way ever again. You start to see the bad side of everything you look at. Contaminants that have remained hidden even run away from his eyes. Did not see things that other people feel the same anymore and you do not love them anymore. Uncomfortable. They cannot look you in the same way again. This is close to you, so no one wants to see. Picture the same image, in fact, changing your eyes. If you walk out the picture, everything remains as before, not everyone is comfortable. Personally, I think it is best to go in such situations. Top go to the top. Out of spite."

"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."

"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."

"The writer is to be selfish. And motherhood is based on the giving."

"This is Rule number thirty-seven - continue shams. - God is a skillful watchmaker. 's so precise is His order that everything on earth happens when the time comes. Neither a minute later, a minute, earlier. And all without exception will run true. For every time he has to love and a time to die."

"The real dirt is inside us. The rest is simply washed away. There is only one dirt that can not be removed with clean water, and it is the stain of hatred and fanaticism infected soul. You can cleanse with abstinence and post body, but his heart is purified only by love."

"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 road to truth is the effort of the heart, not the mind."

"The universe is one being. Everything and everyone is interconnected through an invisible web of stories. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all in a silent conversation. Do no harm. Practise compassion. And do not gossip behind anyone's back - not even seemingly innocent remark! The words that come out of our mouth do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time. One man's pain will hurt us all. One man's joy will make everyone smile."

"The truth is that I have not sought to understand the world. I tried to change it."

"The way we see what God is only a reflection of the way we see Anfsnna. If not God brings to our minds to fear and blame, it means that a great deal of fear and blame is flowing in our souls, but if we saw God full of love and compassion , we will be well"

"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."

"What is the point of Roaming the world When it's the Same Everywhere misery?"

"Try not to resist the changes that come in your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not be afraid that your life is turned upside down. How do you know that what you're used to is better than the things that will come?"

"Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remained closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all that he has been denied."

"Whatever you do Shams, made ​​it for my perfection. Here's what you do not understand the people in the city. He deliberately blew the flames of intrigues, affected patients questions uttered words to ordinary ears sounded like blasphemy, stunned and challenged people, even those who loved him. Threw my books in the water to make me force you to forget what I know. Although everyone had heard what attacks to make sheikhs and scribes, few knew how capable he was tafsira30. Had deep knowledge of alchemy, astrology, astronomy, theology, philosophy and logic, but had knowledge hidden from ignorant eyes. Was fakih31 and acted like fakr32. opened our home to a prostitute and forced us to eat at the same table with her. Send me to the pub to encourage me to talk to drunks. Once made ​​me go and beg at the mosque, where I preached to put in place a Nish, a leper. Tore me from my first pilgrimage and then and nobles to get touch with ordinary people. Thanks to him I met people who otherwise would not have met. Because of the belief that you need to destroy all the idols standing between man and God, including fame, wealth, social status and even religion Shams destroy everything that kept me connected to life as we know it. Have you seen any mental limitations, prejudices and taboos, grabbed the bull by the horns and stood against it. Because it passed inspection and testing different states and stages, after each of which looked into the eyes of his most loyal followers more more deranged. Before I had a bunch of pilgrims, now I got rid of the need to have an audience. Blow after blow Shams managed to ruin my good name. Because of him, I learned how much insanity and by the time I knew the taste of loneliness, of helplessness, intrigues, privacy and ultimately heartbreak. Seest thou gain, run! Poison drink and my personal living water! certainty quit scary places go! strikeout good your name, get disgraced and shameless! Ultimately, we are all put to the test. Every day, every minute God asks us: Remember how we made ​​a covenant before being sent to this world? Do you understand his role in this reveal my riches? Usually we are not ready to answer these questions. they frighten us too much. Yet God velikotarpeliv. He asked again and again. - Elif Shafak , The Forty Rules of Love"

"When you see a hand from afar, Kimya, can you do that there is only one school. But you dive into the water, you realize that there is more than a river. The river is hidden inside various currents and they all run in harmony, yet are completely separate from one another."

"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."

"We will continue to have killed a killer."

"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!"

"Where there is love, there is bound to be heartache."

"While the parts change, the whole always remains the same. For every thief who departs this world, a new one is born. And every decent person who passes away is replaced by a new one. In this way not only does nothing remain the same but also nothing ever really changes."

"Why is it that, in creative writing courses today, the very first thing we teach students is write what you know? Perhaps that's not the right way to start at all. Imaginative literature is not necessarily about writing who we are or what we know or what our identity is about. We should teach young people and ourselves to expand our hearts and write what we can feel. We Should Get out of our Cultural Ghetto Go and visit the next one and the next."

"Writers are selfish people who do not like to draw attention to this fact."

"Writers write without thinking. These theories are applied later, when literary critics and scholars weigh every sentence of the writer. And when you read these theories, people have the impression that novelists deliberately create stories like this, which is not true."

"Why, what's wrong! Religions are like rivers: all flow into a sea. Mother Mary embodies compassion, mercy, love and unconditional love. It is personal, but belongs to everyone. Never mind that you're a Muslim, you can still love her and even called his daughter Maria."

"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."

"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."