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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.
Elif Safak
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Elif Safak
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: October 25
Author
Journalist
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Straßburg
Elif Shafak
Society
Grief
Bombing
Lost
Honor
Unite
Many
Asked
October
Even
Hold
Refused
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Silence
Empathy
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Ankara
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Bombings
More quotes by Elif Safak
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
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
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
I see what you mean. It must be a huge relief, and an easy way out, to think the devil is always outside of us. (…) we would stop looking for Sheitan outside and instead focus on ourselves. What we need is sincere self-examination. Not being on the watch for the faults of others.” (p. 257).
Elif Safak
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.
Elif Safak
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.
Elif Safak
Where there is love, there is bound to be heartache.
Elif Safak
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!
Elif Safak
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
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
Submission does not mean being weak or passive. It leads to neither fatalism nor capitulation. Just the opposite. True power resides in submission. A power that comes from within. Those who submit to the divine essence of life will live in unperturbed tranquility and peace even when the whole wide world goes through turbulence after turbulence.
Elif Safak
I hunt everywhere for a life worth living and a knowledge worth knowing. Having roots nowhere, I have everywhere to go.
Elif Safak
Sometimes I feel I have more faith in European ideals than some of my British or French friends. For them, it's a financial burden. For me, Europe is primarily about values, about fundamental rights, freedom, women's rights.
Elif Safak
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
Moments are born and moments die. For new experiences to come to life, old ones need to wither away.
Elif Safak
The digital world is developing with such force and such a pace that you simply can't ban or control it. People want to be globally connected.
Elif Safak
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
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
I see two opposite tendencies in Turkish society: people feel demoralized, they lose the interest in politics and retreat to their private lives or they become very angry and even more politicized, and radicalized. Both trends are troublesome.
Elif Safak
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
