The Island of Missing Trees Quotes

“They used to say, Greeks and Turks are flesh and fingernail. You can't separate your fingernail from your flesh. It seems they were wrong. It could be done. War is a terrible thing. All kinds of wars. But civil wars are the worst perhaps, when old neighbors become new enemies.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“I believe in legends and in the unspoken secrets they try to gently convey.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“was used to him talking to me, but never as much as he did today. I wondered if, deep down, the winter storm might have triggered feelings of guilt in him. It was he, after all, who had brought me to this sunless country from Cyprus, hidden inside a black leather suitcase.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“your mind, the most suitable companion would be a spruce or a ginkgo. When you arrive at a crossroads and don’t know which path to take, contemplating quietly by a sycamore might help. If you are an artist in need of inspiration, a blue jacaranda or a sweetly scented mimosa could stir your imagination. If it is renewal you are after, seek a wych elm, and if you have too many regrets, a weeping willow will offer solace. When you are in trouble or at your lowest point, and have no one in whom to confide, a hawthorn would be the right choice. There is a reason why hawthorns are home to fairies and known to protect pots of treasure. 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

“You might even say there is a tree for every mood and every moment. When you have something precious to give to the universe, a song or a poem, you should first share it with a golden oak before anyone else. If you are feeling discouraged and defenceless, look for a Mediterranean cypress or a flowering horse chestnut. Both are strikingly resilient, and they will tell you about all the fires they have survived. And if you want to emerge stronger and kinder from your trials, find an aspen to learn from – a tree so tenacious it can fend off even the flames that aim to destroy it. If you are hurting and have no one willing to listen to you, it might do you good to spend time beside a sugar maple. If, on the other hand, you are suffering from excessive self-esteem, do pay a visit to a cherry tree and observe its blossoms, which, though undoubtedly pretty, are no less ephemeral than vainglory. By the time you leave, you might feel a bit more humble, more grounded.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Right, I think I said it's possible to deduce a person's character based on what they first notice in a tree.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“How does that feel, I wonder,' mused Defne. 'Carrying your bones on the outside, I mean. Imagine Cyprus as a huge butterfly! Then we wouldn't have to dig the ground for our missing. We would know we are covered with them.'
No matter how many years would pass, Kostas would never forget that image. A butterfly island. Beautiful, eye-catching, adorned with a splendour of colours, trying to take off into the air and flutter freely across the Mediterranean, but weighed down, each time, by its wings encased in broken bones.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if on that particular day, because of too much caffeine or a side effect of some medication he might have taken earlier or simply nerves, Major General Peter Young's hand had shaken just a trifle... Would the border have shifted a fraction of an inch up or down, inserting here, deleting there, and if so, might this involuntary change have affected my fate or that of my relatives? Would one more fig tree have remained on the Greek side, for instance, or an extra fig tree have been included into Turkish territory?
I try to imagine that inflection point in time. As transient as a scent on the breeze, the briefest pause, the slightest hesitation, the squeak of a chinagraph pencil on the shiny surface of the map, a trail of green leaving its irrevocable mark with everlasting consequences for the lives of generations past, present and yet to come.
History intruding on the future.
Our future...”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“You know what they say: eat according to your own taste, dress according to others’.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“It is a map, the body of an ex-lover, pulling you into its depths and bringing you back to a part of yourself that you thought had been left behind sometime, somewhere. It is a mirror, too, though chipped and cracked, showing all the ways you have changed;”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“What I am trying to say is, you are young and the young are impatient. They can’t wait for school to be over and life to begin. But let me tell you a secret: it already has! This is what life is. Boredom, frustration, trying to get out of things, longing for something better.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“grief became tangible, like something stitched together was tearing apart.”
― 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 other’s invisible roots.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“kindness, the sheer simplicity of it. For kindness always is – direct, naive, effortless.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“what about our ancestors – can they, too, continue to exist through us?”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“What I lack in beauty and popularity, I make up for in mystery and inner strength.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Humans think they know with certainty where their being ends and someone else’s starts.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

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

“why is it always women who cling to these souvenirs and knick-knacks from the past?”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“its secret will rise to the surface, as every secret is bound to do in the end.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“When the night kissed your skin, as it always did, you could smell the jasmine on its breath.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Streets ended abruptly, like unfinished thoughts, unresolved feelings.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Smokve su senzualne, mekane, zagonetne, osjećajne lirske, duhovne, introvertirane. Rogači vole da stvari budu hladne, materijalne, praktične, mjerljive. Pitajte ih za probleme srca i nećete dobiti odgovor. Neće ni zatreperiti. Da ovu priču priča rogač, uvjeravam vas da bi bila veoma drukčija od moje”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“While religions clash to have the final say, and nationalisms teach a sense of superiority and exclusiveness, superstitions on either side of the border coexist in rare harmony.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“...behind her sudden anger were all the words that had been left unsaid between them, swirling inside her soul like unsettled flakes in a snow globe.”
― 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

“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 victims 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.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“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 victims 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.”
― 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 allusive 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

“But no matter what kind of trouble it may be going through, a tree always knows that it is linked to endless life forms – from honey fungus, the largest living thing, down to the smallest bacteria and archaea – and that its existence is not an isolated happenstance but intrinsic to a wider community. Even trees of different species show solidarity with one another regardless of their differences, which is more than you can say for so many humans.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees