Vanya

“Shams of Tabriz

Befuddled believer! If every Ramadan one fasts in the name of God and every Eid one sacrifices a sheep or a goat as an atonement for his sins, if all his life one strives to make pilgrimage to Mecca and five times a day kneels on a prayer rug but at the same time has no room for love in his heart, what is the use of all this trouble? Faith is only a word if there is no love at its center, so flaccid and lifeless, vague and hollow -- not anything you could truly feel.

Pity the fool who thinks the boundaries of his mortal mind are the boundaries of God the Almighty. Pity the ignorant who assume they can negotiate and settle debts with God. Do such people think God is a grocer who attempts to weigh our virtues and wrongdoings on two separate scales? Is He a clerk meticulously writing down our sins in His accounting book so as to make us pay Him back someday? Is this their notion of Oneness?”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“How can a person claim to love you and yet want you to do things that suit only them? Udenna was like that.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck

“Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?
Elif Shafak”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“Listen closer, listen smaller, listen lighter, to any noise at all, and hear what the world will still sound like, long after your concert ends.”
― Richard Powers, Orfeo