There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

We never want our parents’ weaknesses to be seen by others. Their failures are our own private affair, a secret we would rather keep to ourselves; when they become public, for everyone’s consumption, we are no longer the children we once were.

How strange that having money makes one feel less safe.

“Things don’t disappear just because we wish them to.

However passionate a supporter of the poor and downcast, however fervent a champion of the oppressed and downtrodden, the author takes a dim view of societies other than his own.

love that manifests only in a profound and bruising coldness, and leaves the other person hurting, can it ever be deemed love?

Numbers are important and Grandma’s favorite is seven. In order to process an emotion, be it good or bad, you must allow seven days to pass. So if you fall in love, with a lightness to your moves like the speck of pollen on the wing of a butterfly, you have to wait seven days, and, if after that period you still feel the same way, then and only then can you trust your heart. Never make a major decision unless you have spent seven days contemplating it.

Home is where your absence is felt, the echo of your voice kept alive, no matter how long you have been away or how far you may have strayed, a place that still beats with the pulse of your heart.

Empires have a way of deceiving themselves into believing that, being superior to others, they will last forever. A shared expectation that tomorrow the sun will rise again, the earth will remain fertile, and the waters will never run dry. A comforting delusion that, though we will all die, the buildings we erect and the poems we compose and the civilizations we create will survive.

Sometimes your biggest strength becomes your worst weakness.

Narin knows two mighty streams flow through every human being: the good and the bad. Which course we choose to follow—through heart, spirit and mind—ultimately determines who we are. Some people will do everything they can to avoid hurting another person, even in the most desperate of situations, while others will inflict suffering as casually as if they were swatting away a fly.

How is it that lives so tenderly and painstakingly built, year after year, can be shattered in a matter of hours?