Ru > Ru's Quotes

“Soul, if you want to learn secrets,

your heart must forget about
shame
 and dignity.
You are God's lover,

yet you worry
what people
are saying.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Jahan thought there were two main types of temple built by humankind: those that aspired to reach out to the skies and those that wished to bring the skies closer down the ground . On occasion, there there was a third: those that did both. Such was San Pietro (St Peter's Basilica)”
― Elif Shafak, The Architect's Apprentice

“Does what we do in life matter so much? Or is it what we don't do that carries weight?
....
You build with wood, stone, iron. You also build with absence. Your master knows this well.”
― Elif Shafak, The Architect's Apprentice

“It was after this incident that Jahan understood his master’s secret resided not in his toughness, for he was not tough, nor in his indestructibility, for he was not indestructible, but in his ability to adapt to change and calamity, and to rebuild himself, again and again, out of the ruins. While Jahan was made of wood, and Davud of metal, and Nikola of stone, and Yusuf of glass, Sinan was made of flowing water. When anything blocked his course, he would flow under, around, above it, however he could; he found his way through the cracks, and kept flowing forward”
― Elif Shafak, The Architect's Apprentice

“If you carry a sword, you obey the sword, not the other way round. Nobody can hold a weapon and keep their hands clear of blood at the same time.”
― Elif Shafak, The Architect's Apprentice

“In order to gain mastery, you need to dismantle as much as you put together.'
'Then there'd be no buildings left in the world,' Jahan ventured. 'Everything would be razed to the ground.'
'We are not destroying the buildings, son. We are destroying our desire to possess them. Only God is the owner. Of the stone and of the skill.”
― Elif Shafak, The Architect's Apprentice

“It seemed to Jahan that, in truth, this world, too, was a spectacle. One way or another, everyone was parading. They performed their tricks, each of them, some staying longer, others shorter, but in the end they all left through the back door, similarly unfulfilled, similarly in need of applause.”
― Elif Shafak, The Architect's Apprentice

“He was losing his faith in his workmanship. Little did he know, back then, that the worth of one's faith depended not on how solid and strong it was , but on how many times one would lose it and still be able to get it back.”
― Elif Shafak, The Architect's Apprentice

“In my understanding, the women’s movement is first and foremost about memory. It is about remembering the women who lived, struggled, worked and loved before us, including those who we’ve never heard about. The women’s movement is a sense of continuity in time, knowing that you are part of a river, constantly flowing, changing, expanding.
- Elif Shafak”
― Lisa Appignanesi , Fifty Shades of Feminism

“Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison”
― Mary Wollstonecraft

“The system that underpinned and demanded different things from women at different times- to work in times of war, to stay at home when jobs were scarce, to rejoin the job market when ‘it’ needed you to, to work always if you were poor- was the real problem. Whichever propaganda was in place in any particular decade was always working on behalf of ‘work’ itself, of the system. The system really didn’t care about your ‘emancipation’ unless it could sell it back to you for profit.
(Fifty Shades of Feminism)”
― Nina Power

“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains”
― Rosa Luxemburg

“Feminism saved my life and it gave me life. Feminism joined our experiences together and made what might happen to any of us comprehensible. It allowed us to transform difficult and potentially destructive experiences into new forms of understanding and solidarity. It enabled us to create different institutions and collaborative ways of working, with how and where we loved. There wasn’t only individual failure or success per se but a sense of the inherent difficulties any one of us might encounter.
(Fifty Shades of Feminism)”
― Susie Orbach

“Women are each other’s Wonderbras: uplifting, supportive, making each other look bigger and better.
(50 shades of feminism)”
― Kathy Lette

“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.”
― Adrienne Rich

“But are women in power actually uncommon? I think not. The fact is we are everywhere and in every walk of life: there are thousands of us in law, medicine, business, education, the police, media, even in government. But it’s as if that fact has not penetrated into everyday consciousness: women in power are not regarded as ordinary. They are thought of as remarkable and not portraying the usual state of things. Is that why women shy from claiming their position?
(Fifty Shades of Feminism)”
― Lennie Goodings

“The best support Western feminists could give their global sisters (she said), was to listen first and speak later, following the lead of and partnering with local feminists, giving economic and other support from a position of ‘solidarity’ rather than ‘saving”
― Sayantani DasGupta

“It is impossible to establish a real dialogue with someone who does not consider you an equal
(Fifty Shades of Feminism)”
― Lydia Cacho

“In the 1880s feminism - or ‘the women question’, as it was referred to then- concentrated on education. In the early twentieth century the single issue was the vote. But feminism isn’t a single issue anymore. It is the most fundamental shift in human consciousness since Darwin’s natural selection, the recalibration of humanity world- wide. It is a long slow process like the movement of the earth’s crust. Like the tectonic played it will buck and shudder. But it cannot come to an end. It cannot be written off. We are, after all, half the human race.”
― Joan Bakewell

“Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealised into powerlessness”
― Erica Jong

“All around us are people, of all classes, of all nationalities, of all ages. For three days these people, these strangers to one another, are brought together. They sleep and eat under one roof, they cannot get away from each other. At the end of three days they part, they go their several ways, never, perhaps, to see each other again.”
― Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express

“Successful people enjoy the journeys they embark on, irrespective of whether they reach their destination or not.”
― Zain Hashmi

“Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?
Elif Shafak”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It's our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.”
― Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
― Werner Heisenberg

“Words are the bones. Writing is the lungs. Reading is like breathing.”
― T.L. Crain

“I write because I must. It's not a choice or a pastime, it's an unyeilding calling and my passion.”
― Elizabeth Reyes

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
― William Wordsworth

“There is always something missing that torments me.”
― Camille Claudel

“We believe the one who has power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there you get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing