The Island of Missing Trees

by Elif Shafak

Because that is what migrations and relocations do to us: when you leave your home for unknown shores, you don’t simply carry on as before; a part of you dies inside so that another part can start all over again.

Wisdom consists of ten parts: nine parts of silence, one part of words.’

Throughout my long life, I have observed, again and again, this psychological pendulum that drives human nature. Every few decades they sway into a zone of unbridled optimism and insist on seeing everything through a rosy filter, only to be challenged and shaken by events and catapulted back into their habitual apathy and listless indifference.

it’s possible to deduce a person’s character based on what they first notice in a tree.’