The Island of Missing Trees Quotes

“In the most surprising ways, the victims continued to live. Because that it was nature did to death. It transformed abrupt endings into a thousand new beginnings.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Shame was a serpent coiled inside her stomach. It bit her again and again.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Think about it – when we were younger, if someone had told us the island would be partitioned along ethnic lines, and some day we would have to look for unmarked graves, we wouldn’t have believed them. Now we don’t believe it can ever be united again. What we think is impossible changes with every generation.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“A tree is a memory keeper. Tangled beneath our roots, hidden inside our trunks, are the sinews of history, the ruins of wars nobody came to win, the bones of the missing. The water sucked up through our boughs is the blood of the earth, the tears of the victims, and the ink of truths yet to be acknowledged. Humans, especially the victors who hold the pen that writes the annals of history, have a penchant for erasing as much as documenting. It remains to us plants to collect the untold, the unwanted. Like a cat that curls up on its favourite cushion, a tree wraps itself around the remnants of the past. When Lawrence Durrell, having fallen in love with Cyprus, decided to plant cypresses behind his house and took his spade to the soil, he found skeletons in his garden. Little did he know that this was by no means unusual. All around the world, wherever there is, or has ever been, a civil war or an ethnic conflict, come to the trees for clues, because we will be the ones that sit silently in communion with human remains.”
― 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

“=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

“But I’d like to believe I’m attractive in my own disarming way.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“I am a Ficus carica, known as the edible common fig, though I can assure you there’s nothing common about me.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“I had never been good at optimism anyway. It must have been in my DNA. I was descended from a long line of pessimists. So I did what I often did: I began to imagine all the ways in which things could go wrong.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“And yet shadows found a way to creep through the light. Whispers of distrust and conspiracy rippled in the dark.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“the neighbour’s plate should never be returned empty”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Bridges appear in our lives only when we are ready to cross them”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Wisdom contains of ten parts: nine parts of silence, one part of words.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Our food is fresh, our wine old and our recipes timeless.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Ако фамилиите могат да се оприличат на дървета с оплетени корени и стърчащи под странни ъгли клони,то фамилните травми наподобяват гъста и капеща от кората прозрачна смола.Тя сълзи поколение след поколение.Бавна ,тънка и почти незабележима,струйката прекосява времето и пространството,докато намери пукнатина,в която установи и коагулира.”
― Елиф Шафак, The Island of Missing Trees

“Докато религиите са в стълкновение коя ще вземе превес и национализмът учи на чувство на крайна обособеност и превъзходство,то суеверията от двете страни на границата съществуват в рядка хармония.”
― Елиф Шафак, The Island of Missing Trees

“Странни създания са хората.изпълнени са с противоречия и като че ли имат нужда да мразят и отблъскват точно толкова,колкото имат нужда от обич и прегръдки.Сърцата им се заключват,отключват и пак,и пак подобно на нерешително свит юмрук.”
― Елиф Шафак, The Island of Missing Trees

“Колко лесно беше да излъжеш родителите си...И ако не точно да ги излъжеш,то поне да ги държиш зад предпазната стена ,която си изградил.Родителите-и най-вече разсеяните като баща й- отчаяно се нуждаят от уверение,че всичко е наред.Желанието им да вярват в ефикасността на създадените от тях системни грижи е толкова силно,че приемат всичко за нормално въпреки наличието на улики за противното.”
― Елиф Шафак, The Island of Missing Trees

“Любовта е дръзко утвърждаване на надеждата.Никой не прегръща надеждата сред смърт и опустошение.Не обличаш най-хубавата рокля и не се закичваш с цвете сред могили от отломки.Не изгубваш сърцето си във време,когато сърцата трябва да останат заключени.”
― Елиф Шафак, The Island of Missing Trees

“Според мен фанатизмът-в каквато и да е форма-е вирусно заболяване.Прокрадва се заплашително,тиктака като махало,което никога не спира,и те завладява доста по-бързо,ако принадлежиш на затворена,хомогенна общност.Непрестанно си напомням да стоя на разстояние от колективизма и сигурността.”
― Елиф Шафак, The Island of Missing Trees

“Of the thousand of lines he had come across, there was one that had stayed with him. "Someday this pain will be useful to you." I hoped he was right. And that one day, not too far in the future, all this pain would be useful to future generations born on the island, to the grandchildren of those who had lived through the troubles. 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

“Even so, based on personal experience, I can tell you one thing about humans: they will react to the disappearance of a species the way they react to everything else – by putting themselves at the centre of the universe.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Even so, based on personal experience, I can tell you one thing about humans: they will react to the disappearance of a species the way they react to everything else – by putting themselves at”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“that is what nature did to death, it transformed abrupt endings into a thousand new beginnings.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“how”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“God made lower branches for birds that cannot fly so well.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Healthy, loamy dirt is more precious than diamonds and rubies, though I have never heard humans praise it that way.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Just as all trees perennially communicate, compete and cooperate, both above and below the ground, so too do stories germinate, grow, and come into bloom upon each others' invisible roots.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Everything. But no one knows that... We only grasp bits and pieces, each of us, and sometimes your bits and pieces do not match mine.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees