Top 30 Elif Safak Quotes

#1. 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

Elif Safak Quotes #101557
#2. Many analysts compare Turkey with countries in the Middle East, but I think we need to compare it with Russia. Both countries come from a tradition of empire, and also from a tradition of the strong state.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #294491
#3. Obviously, Turkey is not a typical authoritarian regime, and obviously it's very important that there are free elections. But it's also obvious that this is not a liberal, mature democracy. This is why I call Turkey a wobbly democracy. At any time, it can tip over and fall down.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #445120
#4. God is the biggest storyteller, and when we create stories, we connect with him and with each other across cultural, religious and gender boundaries.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #518494
#5. I write with humour about sadness, to introduce an element of sweet to the sour, a bit like Turkish food.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #605820
#6. 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

Elif Safak Quotes #612037
#7. I spent my entire childhood observing people. I still do.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #738008
#8. Turkey has a very young, dynamic, curious population. In Europe, Facebook and Twitter are mostly about sharing daily experiences while for Turkish people, social networks are political platforms.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #762082
#9. 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

Elif Safak Quotes #773581
#10. I am very worried about this concentration of power, and it's not only because of Erdogan. We have the ballot box, but we don't have the culture of democracy. The government says: You see, we have the majority, we're entitled to do anything we want. But that's not democracy, that's majoritarianism.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #834693
#11. I would like the refugee crisis to become a new beginning in the Turkish-European relationship. But it would be very problematic if, during this process, human rights were forgotten. Democracy needs to be the priority.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #836537
#12. 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.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #944948
#13. 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

Elif Safak Quotes #953771
#14. If you want to destroy something in this life, be it 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

Elif Safak Quotes #1022872
#15. 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

Elif Safak Quotes #1084601
#16. I write as if I were drunk. It is a process of intuition rather than placing myself above my story like a puppeteer pulling strings. For me, it's a scary, chaotic process over which I have little control. Words demand other words, characters resist me.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #1172010
#17. 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

Elif Safak Quotes #1175672
#18. I love commuting between languages just like I love commuting between cultures and cities.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #1199387
#19. In a normal democracy, you protect the individual from the excessive power of the state. In Turkey, power elites try to protect the state - as if this state were fragile and needed protection - when in fact, it's too powerful already.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #1214665
#20. 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

Elif Safak Quotes #1352305
#21. Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me. Books saved me. So, I do believe through stories we can learn to change, we can learn to empathize and be more connected with the universe and with humanity.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #1353416
#22. Almost half of the Turkish population believes it is not legitimate to criticize the government. Interestingly, this correlates with the number of supporters of Erdogan's government.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #1413503
#23. For me, writing stories is one way of feeling connected to the universe and God.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #1545172
#24. How can you blame others for disrespecting you when you think of yourself as unworthy of respect?

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #1550602
#25. I find families intriguing, perhaps because I did not grow up in one. I was raised by a feminist, independent, single mother, a divorcee.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #1578908
#26. When I am writing political op-eds, I do think carefully about the impact of my words. When I am writing fiction, it's a different story. In my fiction I am more reckless. I don't care about the real world until I am done with the book.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #1644181
#27. Knowledge that takes you, not beyond yourself is far worse than ignorance.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #1660736
#28. Stories cannot demolish frontiers, but they can punch holes in our mental walls, and through those holes we can get a glimpse of the other and sometimes even like what we see.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #1704420
#29. Feminists are now being vilified in politics, erdogan used to speak more embracingly, saying he was the leader of everyone, whether they voted for him or not. He sounds as if he puts a distance between himself and half the nation.

Elif Safak

Elif Safak Quotes #1780989
#30. 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

Elif Safak Quotes #1822988

Famous Authors

Popular Topics

Scroll to Top