The Bastard of Istanbul

by Elif Shafak

There was something in the color white that resembled silence.

When you didn’t tell anyone the extraordinary, everyone assumed the normal,

“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.”

If you have no interest in their answers, then do not ask questions.

life were one long, uninterrupted rehearsal and everyone memorized their speech.

somehow peers were regarded as the broken pieces of the same puzzle, expected to suddenly make it complete when brought side by side.

no matter what they said or how they said it, one could not really fully express the innermost self and, in the end, language was only a reeking carcass of hollow words long rotten inside.

Once a pomegranate breaks and all its seeds scatter in different directions, you cannot put it back together.”