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The Bastard of Istanbul QUOTES

The Bastard of Istanbul QUOTES

1 " ...for love loves power. That is why we can suicidally fall in love with others but can rarely reciprocate the love of those suicidally in love with us. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

2 " 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. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

3 " 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. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

4 " It is so demanding to be born into a house full of women, where everyone loves you so overwhelmingly that they end up suffocating with their love; a house where you, as the only child, have to be more mature than all the adults around....
But the problem is that they want me to become everything they themselves couldn't accomplish in life.....
As a result, I had to work my butt off to fulfill all their dreams at the same time. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

5 " ...when women survive an awful marriage or love affair, and all that shit, they generally avoid another relationship for quite some time. With men, however, it is just the opposite; the moment they finish a catastrophe they start looking for another one. Men are incapable of being alone. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

6 " It never took her long to darken any conversation, as from birth she was inclined to see misery in each and every story, and to fabricate some when there was none. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

7 " To the one in the skies, this city must look like a scintillating pattern of speckled glows in all directions, like a firecracker going off amid thick darkness. Right now the urban pattern glowing here is in hues of orange, ginger, and ochre. It is a configuration of sparkles, each dot a light lit by someone awake at this hour. From where the Celestial Gaze is situated, from that high above, all these sporadically lit bulbs must seem in perfect harmony, constantly flickering, as if coding a cryptic message to God. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

8 " There was something in the color white that resembled silence. Both were emptied of life. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

9 " I know every single street in this town. And I love strolling these streets in the mornings, in the evenings, and then at night when I am merry and tipsy. I love to have breakfasts with my friends along the Bosphorus on Sundays, I love to walk alone amid the crowds. I am in love with the chaotic beauty of this city, the ferries, the music, the tales, the sadness, the colors, and the black humor..... "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

10 " First you meet someone—someone who is completely different from everyone around you. Someone who sees everything in a different light and forces you to shift, change your angle of vision, observe everything anew, within and without. You think you can keep a safe distance from him. You think you can navigate your way through this beautiful storm until you realize, much too suddenly, you are thrust out into the open and in fact, you control nothing. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

11 " Article Two: The overwhelming majority of people never think and those who think never become the overwhelming majority. Choose your side. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

12 " From her he had learned two fundamental things about love: first, that unlike what the romantics so pompously argued, love was a more gradual course than a sudden blossoming at first sight, and second, that he was capable of loving. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

13 " Literature needs freedom to thrive," she said as she wagged her head. "We didn't have much of that to expand and enlarge Armenian
literature, did we? "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

14 " Literature needs freedom to thrive," she said as she wagged her head. "We didn't have much of that to expand and enlarge Armenian literature, did we? "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

15 " That was the problem with all these butterfly-life-spanned girlfriends the scenarist brought with him. Driven by an impulse to become friends with everyone in the group, they asked too many personal questions and made too many personal comments, miserably failing to acknowledge that it was precisely the opposite, the lack of any serious and sincere interest in each other's privacy, which drew the group members to one another. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

16 " Yeah, we should all line up along the Bosphorus Bridge and puff as hard as we can to shove this city in the direction of the West. If that doesn't work, we'll try the other way, see if we can veer to the East. It's no good to be in between. International politics does not appreciate ambiguity. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

17 " Mourning is like virginity. You should give it to the one who deserves it most. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

18 " As soon as this stage was reached and the ex-love lost his or her appeal, those suffering from abiding heartache could finally let go of their obsession, for love loves power. That is why we can suicidally fall in love with others but can rarely reciprocate the love of those suicidally in love with us. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

19 " Whatever falls from the sky above, thou shall not curse it. That includes the rain. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul

20 " She envied them (the fishermen) for their capacity for stillness, this ability to wait for hours for fish that did not exist, or if they did, turned out to be so tiny that in the end they could only be used as bait for another fish that would never get caught. How amazing was this ability to achieve plenty by achieving little, to go home empty-handed yet still satisfied at the end of the day. "

― Elif Shafak , The Bastard of Istanbul