Elif Safak Quotes

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Elif Safak

Profession : Author

Birth : October 25, 1971

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.

Elif Safak

I was in Madrid as a young girl and a teenager. I'll never forget when I went to the Prado Museum for the first time and saw the paintings of Goya. They had such a big impact on me.

Elif Safak

There are two different ways of writing a novel. The first I call the traditional father way, when the novelist slightly situates himself or herself above the text and knows what each and every character is going to do. It's a bit like engineering. I've never felt close to that tradition. I like the second way, which relies a bit more on intuition.

Elif Safak

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

Elif Safak

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

Elif Safak

English, for me, is an acquired language. I started with English at the age of 10. At the time, it was my third language.

Elif Safak

Writing in another language gives me an additional freedom, an additional way of thinking. It's a challenge, but I like the challenge.

Elif Safak

My readers are surprisingly mixed. I have conservative readers - for instance, women with headscarves - but also many liberal, leftist, feminist, nihilist, environmentalist, and secularist readers. Next to those are mystics, agnostics, Kurds, Turks, Alevis, Sunnis, gays, housewives, and businesswomen.

Elif Safak

Turkey is a complex country. Most readers are women, of all generations, and they are passionate about books. However, the written culture is mostly patriarchal. In general, men write; women read. I would like to see this pattern changing. More women should write novels, poems, plays, and hopefully, more men will read fiction.

Elif Safak

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.

Elif Safak

If you are a writer from Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, you don't have the luxury of being apolitical. You can't say, 'That's politics. I'm just doing my work.'

Elif Safak

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.

Elif Safak