Three Daughters of Eve Quotes

“if you are unwilling to change, do not enter into philosophical arguments”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“Why roots were rated so highly compared with branches or leaves, Peri had never understood. Trees had multiple shoots and filaments extending in every direction, under and above the ancient soils of the earth. If even roots refused to stay put, why expect the impossible from human beings?”
― Elif Shafak, Havva'nın Üç Kızı

“Azur smiled as if he were expecting these answers and said, 'The Malady of Certainty.'

Certainty was to curiosity what the sun was to the wings of Icarus. Where one shone forcefully, the other couldn't survive. With certainty came arrogance; with arrogance, blindness; with blindness, darkness; and with darkness, more certainty. This he called, the converse nature of convictions.”
― Elif Shafak, Havva'nın Üç Kızı

“God was a maze without a map, a circle without a centre; the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that never seemed to fit together. If only she could solve this mystery, she could bring meaning to senselessness, reason to madness, order to chaos, and perhaps, too, she could learn to be happy.”
― Elif Shafak, Havva'nın Üç Kızı

“Early on she learned that there was no fight more hurtful than a family fight, and no family fight more hurtful than one over God.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“She would rather stay home and, in the witching hours, be immersed in a novel –reading being her way to connect with the universe.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“-اترك هذا الرجل يعبر عن آرائه، فالأفكار ينبغي لها أن تتحدى الأفكار، والكتب تتحدى كتباً أفضل منها. فمهما يكن الناس أغبياء، فإنك لا تستطيع كتم أصواتهم. إن حرمان المتكلمين الكلام لا يؤدي إلى التقدم.”
― Elif Shafak, Havva'nın Üç Kızı

“It happened all the time in this city that encompassed seven hills, two continents, three seas and fifteen million mouths. It happened behind closed doors and in open courtyards; in cheap motel rooms and five-star luxury suites; in the midst of the night or plain daylight. The brothels of this city could tell many a story had they only found ears willing to listen. Call girls and rent boys and aged prostitutes beaten, abused and threatened by clients looking for the smallest excuse to lose their temper. Transsexuals who never went to the police for they knew they could be assaulted a second time. Children scared of particular family members and new brides of their fathers- or brothers-in-law; nurses and teachers and secretaries harassed by infatuated lovers just because they had refused to date them in the past; housewives who would never speak a word for there were no words in this culture to describe marital rape. It happened all the time. Canopied under a mantle of secrecy and silence that shamed the victims and shielded the assailants. Istanbul was no stranger to sexual abuse. In this city where everyone feared outsiders, most assaults came from those who were too familiar, too close.”
― Elif Shafak, Havva'nın Üç Kızı

“There was something frighteningly dangerous in the expectation that someone had the answer to most of our questions, and that through that person was a shortcut to all that was left unsolved henceforth.”
― Elif Shafak, Havva'nın Üç Kızı

“England has a peculiar way of making foreigners feel exhilaratingly free and depressingly alone.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“She had always suspected that even the calmest and sweetest women under stress were prone to outbursts of violence. Since she thought of herself as neither calm nor sweet, she had reckoned that her potential to lose control was considerably greater than theirs.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“فعندما نغرم ببعضنا بعضا، نحول الشخص الآخر إلى إله، يا لخطورة هذا الأمر. وحين لا يبادلنا الحب، نرد عليه بالغضب والامتغاص والكراهية...
- ثمة شيء في الحب يشبه الإيمان. نوع من الثقة العمياء. أليس كذلك؟ الشعور بالنشوة وطعم السعادة، سحر الارتباط بمخلوق خارج نفوسنا المحدودة والمألوفة. لكن إذا جرفنا الحب - أو الإيمان - فإنه يتحول إلى عقيدة، إالى تعلق، وتتحول العذوبة الى حموضة، ونعاني بين أيدي الآلهة التي خلقناها بأنفسنا.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“In many parts of the world you were what you said and what you did and, also, what you read; in Turkey, as in all countries haunted by questions of identity, you were, primarily, what you rejected. It seemed that the more people went on about an author, the less likely it was that they had read their books.”
― Elif Shafak, Havva'nın Üç Kızı

“Believers favour answers over questions, clarity over uncertainty. Athiests, more or less the same. Funny, when it comes to God, Whom we know next to nothing about, very few of us actually say, 'I don't know.”
― Elif Shafak, Havva'nın Üç Kızı

“Whether in the name of God or science, there was no satisfaction for the ego quite like the satisfaction of converting someone to your side.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“— .......ştii de ce-l iubesc încă pe Dumnezeu?
— Pentru că e singur, ca mine... ca tine, a răspuns Mensur. Singur-singurel acolo sus pe undeva, fără un suflet cu care să vorbească - mă rog, poate câţiva îngeri, dar cât te poţi distra cu un heruvim? Bilioane de oameni se roagă Ia El: 'O, Doamne, dă-mi reuşite, dă-mi bani, dă-mi un Ferrari, dă-mi aia, dă-mi aialaltă...' Aceleaşi cuvinte iar şi iar, însă nimeni nu-şi prea dă osteneala să-L cunoască.
— Gândeşte-te ce fac oamenii când văd un accident pe şosea. Spun imediat: 'Doamne fereşte!' Poţi să crezi aşa ceva? Prima lor reacţie e să se gândească la ei înşişi, nu la victime. Atâtea rugăciuni sunt copii la indigo ale altora. Apără-mă, iubeşte-mă, ajută-mă, toate ţipă eu, eu, eu... Şi mai numesc asta pietate; eu aş numi-o egoism deghizat.”
― Elif Shafak, Trois filles d'Ève

“المأساة سلعة كأي سلعة أخرى، الهدف منها هو استهلاكها فردياً وجماعياً.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“In the sheltered bosom of faith, one found the answers by letting go of the questions; one advanced by surrendering.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“إن قلب الذكر في بلاد الشرق أشبه بالكرة في نهاية رقاص الساعة، يتأرجح من طرف أقصى إلى آخر. والرجال يعشقون عشقا مبالغا فيه، ويثورون ثورة مبالغا فيها، ويكرهون كراهية أكثر مما يجب لها، دوما أكثر مما يجب، فيتذبذبون بين أداء دور العاشق الولهان ودور الشخص المسرف في الاحتقار، معلقين فوق الحطام العاطفي الذي كان في يوم مضى شغفا وحبا.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“I’m perpetually in a limbo. Maybe I want too many things at once and nothing passionately enough.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“How women could be expected to keep their heads down and simultaneously have their eyes open in all directions was beyond Peri.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“Certainty was to curiosity what the sun was to the wings of Icarus. Where one shone forcefully, the other couldn’t survive. With certainty came arrogance; with arrogance, blindness; with blindness, darkness; and with darkness, more certainty.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“absolutism of all kinds is a weakness,”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“My hijab has never got in the way of my independence.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“The civilized world is ahead of us; we have no choice but to catch up.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“كم يسهل على المرء أن يتحول من الحب إلى الكراهية! إن قلب الذكر في بلاد الشرق أشبه بالكرة في نهاية رقاص الساعة، يتأرجح من طرف أقصى إلى آخر.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“You were expected to believe in the State for the same reason you were expected to believe in God: fear. The bourgeoisie, despite its glamour and glitz, resembled a child afraid of its father –the eternal patriarch, the Baba. Amidst uncertainty, unlike their counterparts in Europe, the local bourgeoisie had neither audacity nor autonomy, neither tradition nor memory –squeezed between what they were expected to be and what they wished to be.”
― Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve

“في مختلف أرجاء العالم، تتحدد هويتك بما أنت عليه وما فعلته وما قرأته أيضاً، أما في تركيا، كما هو شأن البلدان المسكونة بأسئلة تخص الهوية، فإن هويتك تحدد أساسًا بما ترفضه.”
― Elif Shafak, Havva'nın Üç Kızı

“ثمة شيء يرتبط بالخلاف الأسري يشبه الإحساس بقرب حدوث انهيار جليدي. كلمة واحدة، وإذا بالكرة الثلجية تتحول إلى شيء هائل في حجمة يحطم كل فرد.”
― Elif Shafak, Havva'nın Üç Kızı