There Are Rivers in the Sky Quotes

“Words are like birds, when you publish books you are setting caged birds free. They can go wherever they please. They can fly over the highest walls and across vast distances, settling in mansions of gentry, in farmsteads and laborers' cottages alike. You never know whom those words will reach, whose hearts will succumb to their sweet songs.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“Books, like paper lanterns, provide us with a light amidst the fog.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“people fall into three camps: those who hardly, if ever, see beauty, even when it strikes them between the eyes; those who recognize it only when it is made apparent to them; and those rare souls who find beauty everywhere they turn, even in the most unexpected places.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“For the king knows that in order to dominate other cultures, you must capture not only their lands, crops and assets but also their collective imagination, their shared memories.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“It is an odd thing, to lose faith in the beliefs you once held firmly. How strange it is to have carried your convictions like a set of keys, only to realize they will not open any doors.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“Better to be a gentle soul than one consumed by anger, resentment and vengeance. Anyone can wage war, but maintaining peace is a difficult thing.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“As ripples of heat rise into the air, the raindrop will slowly evaporate. But it won’t disappear. Sooner or later, that tiny, translucent bead of water will ascend back to the blue skies. Once there, it will bide its time, waiting to return to this troubled earth again…and again. Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“Hatred is a poison served in three cups. The first is when people despise those they desire—because they want to have them in their possession. It’s all out of hubris! The second is when people loathe those they do not understand. It’s all out of fear! Then there is the third kind—when people hate those they have hurt.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“Home is where your absence is felt, the echo of your voice kept alive, no matter how long you have been away or how far you may have strayed, a place that still beats with the pulse of your heart.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“The world would have been a much more interesting place if everyone was given a chance to meet their ancestors at least for an hour in their lifetime.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“May life be kind to you, child, and when it is not, may you emerge stronger,”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“Truth cloaks herself.’ ‘Why would truth need to cloak herself?’ ‘Because if she were to walk about naked, people would stone her in the streets.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“Books, it seems to me, do not end, even when we are finished reading them.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“That’s the thing about failing: either it makes you super-afraid of failing again or, somehow, you learn to overcome fear.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“There are extraordinary people who appear unexpectedly on our paths, and just as suddenly, they disappear, leaving their indelible marks and a sense of regret. Brief and bright, like a match striking a flame in the dark, they heat the damp kindling of out hearts and then they are gone.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“Remember, my heart. Story-time is different from clock-time.’ Clock-time, however punctual it may purport to be, is distorted and deceptive. It runs under the illusion that everything is moving steadily forward, and the future, therefore, will always be better than the past. Story-time understands the fragility of peace, the fickleness of circumstances, the dangers lurking in the night but also appreciates small acts of kindness. That is why minorities do not live in clock-time. They live in story-time.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“We learn to accept there’ll always be something amiss, something broken, and unless we are kind to ourselves it won’t change, this feeling of incompleteness.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“It’s just so easy to feel lost when you feel low, like you’re drifting alone in endless floodwaters. But you’re not alone. There are many of us on this wooden Ark—sailing without knowing if there is land ahead. Sailing in hope nonetheless…”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it is left behind.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“For every displaced person understands that uncertainty is not tangential to human existence but the very essence of it.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“She wants to excuse herself from a world where she often feels like an outsider, a confused and clumsy latecomer, an accidental guest who walked in through the wrong door at the wrong time.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“Water is the consummate immigrant, trapped in transit, never able to settle.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“To whom does the object belong - the itinerant bards who recited the poem, travelling from city to city; the king who ordered it to be put in writing; the scribe who laboured in setting it down; the librarian who scrupulously stored it; the archaeologist who unearthed it centuries later; the museum that will keep it safe - or does it belong only to the people of this land, and, if so, will minorities like the Yazidis ever be counted amongst them?”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“But you’re mistaken about me. If you only knew how difficult it is to be calm and composed. If you only knew, it takes a fierce fight inside to remain peaceful on the outside.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“Empires have a way of deceiving themselves into believing that, being superior to others, they will last forever.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“Arthur is beginning to suspect that civilization is the name we give to what little we have salvaged from a loss that no one wants to remember. Triumphs are erected upon the jerry-built scaffolding of brutalities untold, heroic legends spun from the thread of aggressions and atrocities.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“The ear never forgets what the heart has heard.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“We never want our parents’ weaknesses to be seen by others. Their failures are our own private affair, a secret we would rather keep to ourselves; when they become public, for everyone’s consumption, we are no longer the children we once were.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“Words are like birds,’ says Mr Bradbury. ‘When you publish books, you are setting caged birds free. They can go wherever they please. They can fly over the highest walls and across vast distances, settling in the mansions of the gentry, in farmsteads and labourers’ cottages alike. You never know whom those words will reach, whose hearts will succumb to their sweet songs.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky