Quotes from Elif Safak

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.

For me, writing stories is one way of feeling connected to the universe and God.

Knowledge that takes you, not beyond yourself is far worse than ignorance.

Politicians and leaders who see the media as 'the enemy within' divide society into two clashing cultural camps. Populist demagogues benefit from binary oppositions.

I love commuting between languages just like I love commuting between cultures and cities.

How can you blame others for disrespecting you when you think of yourself as unworthy of respect?

Moments are born and moments die. For new experiences to come to life, old ones need to wither away.

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.

I hunt everywhere for a life worth living and a knowledge worth knowing. Having roots nowhere, I have everywhere to go.

For me, coming from the women's movement, politics is not just about parties and parliament. There is politics in our private space and in gender relations as well. Wherever there's power, there's politics.

I like to question cultural biases wherever I go, and I question Islamophobia as much as I question anti-western sentiment because I think all extremist ideologies are very similar.

Bad writing is like a bad relationship. Don't be addicted to it just because you are familiar with its ways. Let go.

Part of me always felt like the other, the outsider, the observer. My father had two sons with his second wife, who I didn't meet until my late 20s. I was always on the periphery. In Madrid, I was the only Turk in a very international school, so I had to start thinking about identity. All these things affected me.

Either grant me the bliss of the ignorant or give me the strength to bear the knowledge.

Time is just an illusion. What you need is to live this very moment. That is all that matters.

Perhaps this is why lunatics have a harder time dating, not because they are off the wall but because it is hard to find soemone who is willing to date so many people in one person.

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 lack of trust in supranational entities and cosmopolitan elite creates a fertile ground for tribalist belongings and reactionary politics.

Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness

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.

When I looked at people like Goya and Pina Bausch, the message I got was just do what you're passionate about. Don't think about what other people are going to say or how they're going to receive your work. Just be your work.

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.

Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all.

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