There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.

the clouds are rolling steadily closer, propelled by a forceful wind, determined to drench the world and shape it anew.

water is both the harbinger of life and the messenger of death.

babies are hushed to sleep not by a lullaby but by the sound of the waves lapping at the shoreline.

it has made the journey before—ascending to the sky, descending to terra firma and rising heavenwards again—and yet it still finds the fall terrifying. Remember that drop, inconsequential though it may be compared with the magnitude of the universe. Inside its miniature orb, it holds the secret of infinity, a story uniquely its own.

charts…For the king knows that in order to dominate other cultures, you must capture not only their lands, crops and assets but also their collective imagination, their shared memories.

Not every written word is meant for the eyes of every reader. Just as not every spoken word needs to be heard by every eavesdropper.

One man’s rebellion, if left unchecked and unpunished, can embolden many dissidents.

reading as much a part of his being as the instinct to breathe.

As ripples of heat rise into the air, the raindrop will slowly evaporate. But it won’t disappear. Sooner or later, that tiny, translucent bead of water will ascend back to the blue skies. Once there, it will bide its time, waiting to return to this troubled earth again…and again. Water remembers. It is humans who forget.

It is as if love, by its fluid nature, its riverine force, is all about the melding of markers, to the extent that you can no longer tell where your being ends and another’s begins.

Leaving home is never easy, but it is much, much harder when you have nowhere to go.

my voice will always be by your side—even after I’m gone. Because I’m impressed here…and here…” Grandma touches the girl’s temples. “That is what happens when you love someone—you carry their face behind your eyelids, and their whispers in your ears, so that even in deep sleep, years later, you can still see and hear them in your dreams.”

Water hardens in adverse circumstances, not unlike the human heart.

Water is the consummate immigrant, trapped in transit, never able to settle.