The Island of Missing Trees Quotes

“The bear knows seven songs and they are all about honey”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Despite all this, it would take me seven years to be able to yield fruit again. 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.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“We never consider how animals are affected by our wars and fights but they suffer just like us.”
― 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

“First-generation immigrants are a species all their own. They wear a lot of beige, grey or brown. Colours that do not stand out. Colours that whisper, never shout. There is a tendency to formality in their mannerisms, a wish to be treated with dignity. They move with a slight ungainliness, not quite at ease in their surroundings. Both eternally grateful for the chances life has given them and scarred by what it has snatched away, always out of place, separated from others by some unspoken experience, like survivors of a car accident.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Because the past is a dark, distorted mirror. You look at it, you only see your own pain. There is no room in there for someone else's pain.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Now, Aphrodite emerged from foam, remember? Foam love is a nice feeling, but just as superficial. When it’s gone, it’s gone, nothing remains. Always aim for the kind of love that comes from the deep.’ ‘I’m not in love!’ ‘Fine, but when you are, just remember, foam love is interested in foam beauty. Sea love seeks sea beauty. And you, my heart, deserve sea love, the strong and profound and enchanting type.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Look," she said "I dont want to talk about this. You must understand, whenever something terrible happens to a country - or an island - a chasm opens between those who go away and those who stay. I'm not saying it's easy for the people who left, I'm sure they have their own hardships, but they have no idea what it was like for the ones who stayed."
"The ones who stayed dealt with the wounds and then the scars, and that must be extremely painful," said Kostas. "But for us ... runaways, you might call us ... we never have a chance to heal, the wounds always remain open.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“A map is a two-dimensional representation with arbitrary symbols and incised lines that decide who is to be our enemy and who is to be our friend, who deserves our love and who deserves our hatred and who, our sheer indifference.
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

“The voices of our motherlands never stop echoing in our minds. We carry them with us everywhere we go.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Anyone who expects love to be sensible, has perhaps never loved.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“As far as Meryem was concerned, Greek baklava was Turkish baklava. And if the Syrians or Lebanese or Egyptians or Jordanians or any others lay claim to her beloved dessert, tough luck. It wasn’t theirs either. While the slightest change in her dietary vocabulary could rub her up the wrong way, it was the label Greek coffee that particularly boiled her blood. Which to her always was and always would be, Turkish coffee. By now, Ada had long discovered that her aunt was full of contradictions. Although she could be movingly respectful and empathetic towards other cultures and acutely aware of the dangers of cultural animosities, she automatically transformed into a kind of nationalist in the kitchen, a culinary patriot.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“I didn’t make falafel. It’s not even our cuisine.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“The human mind was the strangest place, both home and exile. How could it hold on to something as elusive and intangible as a scent when it was capable of erasing concrete chunks of the past, block by block?”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Ada said, 'You make it sound as if we should judge a culture not by its literature or philosophy or democracy, just by its baklava.'
'Uhm, yes.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“for us … runaways, you might call us … we never have a chance to heal, the wounds always remain open.”
― 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

“Sea love seeks sea beauty. And you, my heart, deserve sea love, the strong and profound and enchanting type.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“And I want you to understand a fundamental rule about love. You see, there are two kinds: the surface and the deep water. Now, Aphrodite emerged from foam, remember? Foam love is a nice feeling, but just as superficial. When it’s gone, it’s gone, nothing remains. Always aim for the kind of love that comes from the deep.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“May you never be able to forget. May you go to your grave still remembering.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“But, then again, anyone who expects love to be sensible has perhaps never loved.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Without understanding our past, how can we hope to shape our future?”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

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

“Because in real life, unlike in history books, stories come to us not in their entirety but in bits and pieces, broken segments and partial echoes, a full sentence here, a fragment there, a clue hidden in between. In life, unlike in books, we have to weave our stories out of threads as fine as the gossamer veins that run through a butterfly’s wings.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“They move with a slight ungainliness, not quite at ease in their surroundings. Both eternally grateful for the chances life has given them and scarred by what it has snatched away, always out of place, separated from others by some unspoken experience, like survivors of a car accident.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“I’ll come to the island,’ Ada said, a new note in her voice. ‘I just want to meet islanders, like myself.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“The world is unfair,’ said Meryem. ‘If a stone falls on an egg, it is bad for the egg; if an egg falls on a stone, it is still bad for the egg.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“kindness always is – direct, naive, effortless.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“I can tell you one thig about humans: they will react to the disappearance of a species the way they react to everything else - by putting themselves at the center of the universe.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“People from troubled islands can never be normal. We can pretend, we can even make amazing progress – but we can never really learn to feel safe. The ground that feels rock hard to others is choppy waters for our kind.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees