The Island of Missing Trees Quotes

“Bitkiler ve hayvanlar hakkında, doğanın tüm tezahürleri ve muhteşemliği hakkında konuşmanın ne yeri ne de zamanıydı ve işte Kostas böylece yavaş yavaş kapattı kendini dışarıya, adanın içinde bir ada oyup çıkardı kendine ve sessizliğe gömüldü.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Cartography is another name for stories told by winners.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Love is the bold affirmation of hope. You don’t embrace hope when death and destruction are in command. You don’t put on your best dress and tuck a flower in your hair when you are surrounded by ruins and shards. You don’t lose your heart at a time when hearts are supposed to remain sealed, especially for those who are not of your religion, not of your language, not of your blood.”
― 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

“I can feel a pale ray of sunshine combing the earth, excruciatingly slowly. It will take time, renewal. It will take time, healing.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“There was an effortless tenderness to their movements, a blending of shades and contours, solid forms melting into pure liquid, a gentle flow that could exist only between long-term lovers.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“If families resemble trees, as they say, arborescent structures with entangled roots and individual branches jutting out at awkward angles, family traumas are like thick, translucent resin dripping from a cut in the bark. They trickle down generations. They ooze down slowly, a flow so slight as to be imperceptible, moving across time and space, until they find a crack in which to settle and coagulate. The path of an inherited trauma is random; you never know who might get it, but someone will. Among children growing up under the same roof, some are affected by it more than others. Have you ever met a pair of siblings who have had more or less the same opportunities, and yet one is more melancholic and reclusive? It happens. Sometimes family trauma skips a generation altogether and redoubles its hold on the following one. You may encounter grandchildren who silently shoulder the hurts and sufferings of their grandparents.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“He was not prepared for this new sky overhead, which was dimly lit most of the time, only occasionally flickering into life like a buzzing bulb with low voltage.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“I reminded myself that she, too, was a casualty of the parasite, and sometimes what you called a perpetrator was just another name for an unacknowledged victim. But I could not see it that way. I failed to overcome the bitterness and anger that rose up in me.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“The dilemma between optimism and pessimism is more than a theoretical debate for us. It is integral to our evolution.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Make no mistake: that was no apple. It is high time someone corrected this gross misunderstanding. Adam and Eve yielded to the allure of a fig, the fruit of temptation, desire and passion, not some crunchy apple.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“If they only knew they have rainbows under their feet.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“But she held him tight and her embrace was strong and genuine, and it was all he needed. It filled him.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Pijn, er was zo veel pijn overal en bij iedereen. Alleen konden sommigen die pijn goed verbergen, terwijl anderen dat niet meer lukte.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“In het echte leven krijgen we verhalen immers niet in één keer te horen, zoals in de geschiedenisboeken, maar komen ze in stukjes en beetjes tot ons, in flarden en halve echo's, hier een complete zin, daar een brokstuk, met daartussenin een verborgen aanwijzing.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“From where I lay, I listened to the low, resonant, steady rap-rap-rap, stone laid on stone, rising like a column to support the vault of heaven. Those who believe in such things say the sound represents the footsteps of a lost soul treading across the Bridge of Siraat, thinner than a strand of hair, sharper than a sword, straddling precariously the void between this world and the next. At every step, the soul jettisons yet another one of its innumerable burdens, until finally it lets go of everything, including all the pain stored within.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“For wisdom, try a beech; for intelligence, a pine; for bravery, a rowan; for generosity, a hazel; for joy, a juniper; and for when you need to learn to let go of what you cannot control, a birch with its white-silver bark, peeling and shedding layers like old skins. Then again, if it’s love you’re after, or love you have lost, come to the fig, always the fig.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Mosquitoes are humankind's nemesis. They've killed half the humans who ever walked the earth. It always amazes me that people are terrified of tigers and crocodiles and sharks, not to mention imaginary vampires and zombies, forgetting that their deadliest foe is none other than the tiny mosquito.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“If you go to Cyprus today, you can still find tombstones of Greek widows and Turkish widows, engraved in different alphabets but with a similar plea:

If you find my husband, please bury him next to me.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“When Westerners run away like that it means those of us they leave behind are in deep shit.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Better to keep some distance from all collective beliefs and certainties, I always remind myself.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“The cruelty of life rested not only on its injustices, injuries and atrocities, but also in the randomness of it all.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“When elderly Cypriot women wish ill upon someone, they don’t ask for anything blatantly bad to befall them. They don’t pray for lightning bolts, unforeseen accidents or sudden reversals of fortune. They simply say, May you never be able to forget. May you go to your grave still remembering.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Las leyendas existen para contarnos lo que la historia ha olvidado”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“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

“wish I could have told him that loneliness is a human invention. Trees are never lonely. Humans think they know with certainty where their being ends and someone else’s starts. With their roots tangled and caught up underground, linked to fungi and bacteria, trees harbour no such illusions. For us, everything is interconnected.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Trajno sjećanje pravo je prokletstvo. Kad stare Cipranke nekom žele zlo, ne traže da im se dogodi ništa očito loše. Ne mole se da ih pogodi grom, zadese nepredviđene nesreće ili nagli obrati sreće. Samo kažu:
Dao Bog da nikad ne možeš zaboraviti.
Dao Bog da odeš u grob još uvijek svega se sjećajući.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Priznajem, nije baš razborito zaljubiti se u nekog tko nije tvoje vrste, nekog tko će samo zakomplicirati tvoj život, poremetiti tvoju rutinu i narušiti tvoj osjećaj stabilnosti i ukorijenjenosti. Ali s druge strane, svatko tko od ljubavi očekuje razboritost možda nikad nije volio.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Voljela bih da sam mu mogla reći da su usamljenost izmislili ljudi. Stabla nikad nisu sama. Ljudi misle da znaju gdje njihovo biće završava, a tuđe počinje. Sa svojim isprepletenim korijenjem zarobljenim ispod zemlje, spojenim s gljivama i bakterijama, stabla ne gaje takve iluzije. Za nas je sve međusobno povezano.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Na satovima prirode naučili su da svatko naslijedi jedan kromosom od majke i jedan od oca - duge niti deoksiribonukleinske kiseline s tisućama gena koji grade milijarde neurona i bilijune veza između njih. U njima su sve genetičke informacije koje se prenose s roditelja na djecu - opstanak, rast, reprodukcija, boja kose, oblik nosa, hoćeš li imati pjege ili kihati na sunčevu svjetlu. Ali ništa od tog nije odgovaralo na jedino pitanje koje joj je plamtjelo u umu : je li moguće naslijediti i nešto tako neopipljivo i nemjerljivo kao što je tuga?”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees