The Island of Missing Trees Quotes

“She was blooming and thriving with your love, and I'd like to believe with mine, too, but underneath, something was strangling her - the past, the memories, the roots.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Cartography is another name for stories told by winners.
For stories told by those who have lost, there isn’t one.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Women are holding up the world, we don't have time for monkey business!”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Human remains ... What exactly did that mean? Was it a few hard bones and soft tissue? Clothes and accessories? Things solid and compact enough to fit inside a coffin? Or was it rather the intangible - the words we send out into the ether, the dreams we keep to ourselves, the heartbeats we skip beside our lovers, the voids we try to fill and can never adequately articulate - when all was said and done, what was left of an entire life, a human being ... and could that really be disinterred from the ground?”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Arriving there is what you are destined for,
But do not hurry the journey at all...”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“To immigrants and exiles everywhere, the uprooted, the re-rooted, the rootless, And to the trees we left behind, rooted in our memories …”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Pain, there was so much pain everywhere and in everyone. The only difference was between those who managed to hide it and those who no longer could.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“One thing I noticed back then, and have never forgotten, was that remote and seemingly lone trees were not as badly affected as those living together in close proximity. Today, I think of fanaticism – of any type – as a viral disease. Creeping in menacingly, ticking like a pendulum clock that never winds down, it takes hold of you faster when you are part of an enclosed, homogenous unit. Better to keep some distance from all collective beliefs and certainties, I always remind myself.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Mosquitoes had developed resistance to DDT, and the parasites to chloroquine.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Humans are strange that way, full of contradictions. It's as if they need to hate and exclude as much as they need to love and embrace.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Parents, especially those as distracted as her father, desperately needed things to run smoothly and were so inclined to believe the system they had created was working fine that they assumed a normality even when surrounded by clues to the contrary.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Time is a songbird, and just like any other songbird it can be taken captive. It can be held prisoner in a cage and for even longer than you might think possible. But time cannot be kept in check in perpetuity”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Today, I think of fanaticism – of any type – as a viral disease. Creeping in menacingly, ticking like a pendulum clock that never winds down, it takes hold of you faster when you are part of an enclosed, homogenous unit.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Humans are strange that way, full of contradictions. It’s as if they need to hate and exclude as much as they need to love and embrace. Their hearts close tightly, then open at full stretch, only to clench again, like an undecided fist.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Tijekom svog dugog života mnogo sam puta promatrala psihooško njihalo na kojem se klati ljudska priroda. Svakih nekoliko desetjeća zanjišu se u neobuzdani optimizam i inzistiraju sve vidjeti kroz ružičasti filter, ali događaji ih uvijek izazovu i potresu, i katapultiraju natrag u uobičajenu apatiju i depresiju.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Posmrtni ostaci... Što to točno znači? Je li to nekoliko tvrdih kostiju i mekog tkiva? Odjeća i modni dodaci? Stvari koje su dovoljno čvrste i kompaktne da stanu u lijes? Ili je to ono neopipljivo - riječi koje šaljemo u eter, snovi koje zadržimo za sebe, otkucaji srca koje preskočimo uz svoje ljubavnike, praznine koje pokušavamo ispuniti i nikad ne možemo artikulirati na primjeren način - na kraju balade, što ostaje od jednog cijelog života, jednog ljudskog bića... i može li se to doista iskopati iz zemlje?”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Ljudski um krajnje je neobično mjesto, dom i izgnanstvo u isti mah. Kako može pamtiti nešto tako neuhvatljivo i neopipljivo kao što je miris, a sposoban je izbrisati konkretne dijelove prošlosti, gromadu po gromadu?”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Ljudsko vrijeme linearan je, uredan kontinuum od prošlosti koja bi trebala biti završena prema budućnosti koja se smatra nedirnutom, neokaljanom. Svaki dan mora biti posve nov, ispunjen novim događajima, svaka ljubav posve drugačija od one prethodne. Želja ljudske vrste za novošću nezasitna je i nisam sigurna da im čini mnogo dobrog.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Say some soothing words to your fig tree, trust in her and wait for spring.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Humans, especially the victors who hold the pen that writes the annals of history, have a penchant for erasing as much as documenting.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Humans teach their children to paint the earth in one colour alone. They imagine the sky in blue, the grass in green, the sun in yellow and the earth entirely in brown. If they only knew they have rainbows under their feet.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“He knew, even back then, that she was prone to bouts of melancholy. It came to her in successive waves, an ebb and flow. When the first wave arrived, barely touching her toes, it was so light and translucent a ripple that you might be forgiven for thinking it insignificant, that it would vanish soon, leaving no trace. But then followed another wave, and the next one, rising as far as her ankles, and the one after that covering her knees, and before you knew it she was immersed in liquid pain, up to her neck, drowning. That’s how depression sucked her in.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees