Elif Safak
Elif Safak
Elif Şafakis a Turkish author, columnist, speaker and academic...
NationalityTurkish
ProfessionAuthor
CountryTurkey
children past breathe
The past lives within the present, and our ancestors breathe through our children.
moving mean past
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.
past illumination mind
If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.
mistake acceptance past
One thing that has helped me personally in the past was to stop interfering with the people around me and getting frustrated when I couldn’t change them. Instead of intrusion and passivity, may I suggest submission? Some people make the mistake of confusing “submission” with “weakness”, whereas it is anything but. Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe, including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend.
grief people empathy
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.
land people literature
Isn't connecting people to distant lands and culture one of the strengths of good literature?
cities childhood forget
But let us not forget that cities are like human beings. They are born, they go through childhood and adolescence, they grow old, and eventually they die
book ends feels
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.
media land turkeys
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.
people pace world
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.
believe government optimism
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.
dream player egypt
Turkey in general became too involved with what is happening in Egypt and in Syria. Some politicians with neo-Ottoman dreams developed this idea of being a major player in the Middle East, which hasn't gone as expected.
mean infinite-time doe
Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness
running heart mean
We're born into a certain family, nation, class. But if we have no connection whatsoever with the worlds beyond the one we take for granted, then we too run the risk of drying up inside. Our imagination might shrink; our hearts might dwindle, and our humanness might wither if we stay for too long inside our cultural cocoons. Our friends, neighbours, colleagues, family - if all the people in our inner circle resemble us, it means we are surrounded with our mirror image.