There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

“He wished to conquer death and so he traveled to the ends of the world—but he failed. He did not see that the only way to become immortal is to be remembered after you have gone, and the only way to be remembered is to leave behind a good story.

Water remembers. It is humans who forget.

Water…the strangest chemical, the great mystery. With two hydrogen atoms at the tips, each bonded to a single oxygen at the center, it is a bent molecule, not linear. If it were linear, there would be no life on earth…no stories to tell.

Certainty is neither needed nor something she would trust.

How frightening it is, but also how strangely invigorating to realize that the world he has experienced is only one of many possible worlds.

Prayer is not about asking for things. It is a conversation. When God is less lonely, we are less lonely.”

The water inside us communes with the water outside us.

More and more, he comes to realize that people fall into three camps: those who hardly, if ever, see beauty, even when it strikes them between the eyes; those who recognize it only when it is made apparent to them; and those rare souls who find beauty everywhere they turn, even in the most unexpected places.

Time is circles within circles. It neither dies nor declines but whirls in epicycles. Like a wheel that continues to spin even after its power is turned off, family conflicts live on long after the individual members have passed away.

a story is a flute through which truth breathes.

Better to be a gentle soul than one consumed by anger, resentment and vengeance. Anyone can wage war, but maintaining peace is a difficult thing.

“Grandma…does every sickness in this world have a cure?” “It does, my love.” “How can you be sure?” “Because I trust God—He would not give us a stomachache without growing mint nearby.”

It doesn’t occur to him that we are drawn to the kind of stories that are already present within us, germinating and pushing their way through to the surface, like seeds ready to sprout at the first hint of sun.

“You can’t know what is possible unless you try to imagine it first,”

“But why did she leave?” Grandma heaves herself upright. Her long hair, hennaed and unbraided, spills on to her shoulders. “She had no choice. Sometimes even trees have to uproot themselves—entire forests have been known to migrate.” “What does that mean?” “It means, as settled as we are in this land, the winds can blow so harshly at times that they can force us out.” “You speak like a riddle.” “Riddles are how Lady Truth cloaks herself.” “Why would truth need to cloak herself?” “Because if she were to walk about naked, people would stone her in the streets.”

“Why are women left out of history? Why do we have to piece their stories back together from fragments—like broken shards of pottery?”

That’s the thing about failing: either it makes you super-afraid of failing again or, somehow, you learn to overcome fear.”