Elif Safak Quotes

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Elif Safak

Profession : Author

Birth : October 25, 1971

We need a dose of doubt and a dose of faith, to challenge each other.

Elif Safak

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

I spent my entire childhood observing people. I still do.

Elif Safak

Art and literature should help us to get out of our mental cocoons.

Elif Safak

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

When I was 10 years old, we moved to Spain with my mother. I learned Spanish before I learned English. But the English language stayed with me.

Elif Safak

I write my novels in English first; then they are translated into Turkish by professional translators. Then I take their translation and rewrite. So basically, I write the same novel twice.

Elif Safak

Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability.

Elif Safak

It is tiring to be Turkish. The country is badly polarised, bitterly politicized. Every writer, journalist, poet knows that because of an article, a novel, an interview, a poem or a tweet you can be sued, put on trial, even arrested. Self-censorship is widespread.

Elif Safak

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.

Elif Safak

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

Elif Safak

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

With 'The Forty Rules of Love,' I wanted to write a love story. But I wanted a love story with a spiritual dimension. For me, that took me to Rumi. And from Rumi, I went to Shams of Tabriz. That's how the story took shape.

Elif Safak

When societies go backwards and slide into authoritarianism, nationalism, and tribalism, machismo and sexism are also emboldened.

Elif Safak

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

I write with humour about sadness, to introduce an element of sweet to the sour, a bit like Turkish food.

Elif Safak

I realized over the years if I'm writing about humor, irony, satire, I much prefer to do that in English. And if there is sorrow, melancholy, longing, I much prefer to do that in Turkish. Each language has its own strength to me, and I feel connected and attached to both Turkish and English. I dream in more than one language.

Elif Safak

If there is no love between the author and the story, there is no love between the reader and the story.

Elif Safak

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

Elif Safak

The only way to learn writing is by writing. Talent, as charming as it sounds, amounts to no more than 12 per cent of the process. Work is 80 per cent. The remaining 8 per cent is 'luck' or 'zeitgeist' - in short, things that are not in our hands.

Elif Safak