Elena

“Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“Real filth is the one inside. The rest simply washes off. There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul. You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“It is not their quantative scarcity vis-a-vis the majority that makes minorities hapless but rather their qualitative similarity. As a member of a minority group, you can be as industrious as an ant, even hit the jackpot and acquire a considerable fortune, but someday, just because you presently and will always belong to the same community, you could in an instant find yourself on par with those of your community who have idled their lives away since birth. That is why the affluent among the minorities are never affluent enough; neither are their exceptional members ever sufficiently so.”
― Elif Shafak, The Flea Palace

“People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can't answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It's easy.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted