Author of quotes: Elif Shafak. Page 2

Bridges appear in our lives only when we are ready to cross them.

- The Lord answers. His answer is a new work that He sends to us, - the mentor explained.

You don't fall in love in Cyprus in the summer of 1974. Not here and not now. And yet they fell in love, these two.

While religions fight for the right to have the last word, and nationalism teaches superiority and exclusivity, superstitions on both sides of the border coexist in amazing harmony.

No confinement lasts long.

People find mice and rats disgusting and hamsters and gerbils cute. Pigeons symbolize world peace, although doves are just carriers of urban contagion. Pigs are considered adorable, but wild boars are shot. People admire nutcrackers, but they can't stand crows - noisy relatives of these cute birds. Dogs evoke warm feelings, while wolves become characters in scary tales. People have a weakness for ladybugs, while they are happy to crush soldier bugs. Bees enjoy a special favor with humans, which cannot be said about wasps. Horseshoe crabs are admired, but spiders, their distant relatives, are a completely different story ... I tried to find at least some logic in all this, but in the end I gave up, realizing the futility of this lesson.

They flow slowly - in a weak, almost imperceptible flow - moving through time and space until they find a crack where they can settle and harden. If we take, for example, children who grew up under the same roof, then some suffer from such injuries more than others. Haven't you ever met brothers and sisters who were completely different from each other in temperament, although they had the same opportunities? One of them is always more withdrawn and melancholic than the other. That happens. Sometimes family traumas skip a generation and double their grip in the next. Often, grandchildren silently carry the grievances and experiences of their grandparents.

This is the difference between the younger and older generation. The older you get, the less you care about the opinions of others, and that's how you find freedom.

The places where we were born shape our lives, even if we are far away. So it was and so it will be.

Anyone who believes that love can be reasonable has never loved.

The body of a loved one is a land without borders. You open it, but not at once, but carefully, step by step, going astray, losing your bearings, making your way through its sun-drenched valleys and hilly fields - warm and welcoming - and you find yourself in secret corners with hidden caves - invisible, unexpected - and potholes that can be bumped into and injured.

This is what emigration and displacement do to us. When you leave your home for unknown shores, you not only live differently from before, no, some part of you dies so that the rest can begin to live again.

Just as trees are constantly communicating, competing and collaborating - both above and below the ground - so stories sprout, flow and bloom, intertwining with invisible roots.

Be not one of those despicable souls who deserve neither reproach nor praise.