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If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.

Elif Safak

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Elif Safak
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: October 25
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Straßburg
Elif Shafak
Within
Future
Moment
Experience
Illumination
Moments
Forty
Past
Remain
Mind
Eternal
Present

More quotes by Elif Safak

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Words are heavy in Turkey, and every writer, every poet and every journalist knows that, because of a word, because of a sentence, because of a tweet or even a retweet, you can be sued, you can be demonized by the media and you can even land in prison.
Elif Safak
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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.
Elif Safak
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What is the point of roaming the world when it's the same misery everywhere?
Elif Safak
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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
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That was the one thing about the rain that likened it to sorrow: You did your best to remain untouched, safe and dry, but if and when you failed, there came a point in which you started seeing the problem less in terms of drops than as an incessant gush, and thereby you decide you might as well get drenched.
Elif Safak
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Identity politics divides us. Fiction connects. One is interested in sweeping generalizations. The other, in nuances. One draws boundaries. The other recognizes no frontiers. Identity politics is made of solid bricks. Fiction is flowing water.
Elif Safak
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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
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Time is just an illusion. What you need is to live this very moment. That is all that matters.
Elif Safak
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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
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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
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Because time is a drop in the ocean, and you cannot measure off one drop against another to see which one is bigger, which one is smaller.
Elif Safak
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Moments are born and moments die. For new experiences to come to life, old ones need to wither away.
Elif Safak
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I remember a time when it was ok to make fun of politicians and powerful people. Now, it's not ok anymore. We've forgotten how to laugh.
Elif Safak
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Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful!
Elif Safak
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No matter who we are or where we live, deep inside we all feel incomplete. It's like we have lost something and need to get it back. Just what that something is, most of us never find out. And of those who do, even fewer manage to go out and look for it.
Elif Safak
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A saint belongs to all humanity.
Elif Safak
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I believe in optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect. But my hope is the people, the society, which is ahead of the government.
Elif Safak
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Isn't connecting people to distant lands and culture one of the strengths of good literature?
Elif Safak
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Our politics is very masculine, very aggressive, and it's very polarizing. And the pace of this development has increased in recent years. Erdogan is, in my eyes, the most polarizing politician in recent Turkish political history.
Elif Safak
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Where there is love, there is bound to be heartache.
Elif Safak