Elif Safak Quotes

Books stay with me and have shaped me and made huge impacts on my life.

In our own, theatre can be the place where we come together, reaching with and through stories, to who we are and to who we can be.

Throughout my career as a lawyer, teacher and labor leader, books have remained my constant companion - stuffed into a briefcase, overflowing on my bedside table, stacked on my desk at work. Books have carried me to distant worlds, opened new doors and made me feel empathy, compassion, anger, fear, joy, acceptance - and everything in between.

The only thing that kept me going was stories. Stories are hope. They take you out of yourself for a bit, and when you get dropped back in, you're different- you're stronger, you've seen more, you've felt more. Stories are like spiritual currency.

People change when they hurt enough that they have to change, learn enough that they want to change, receive enough that they are able to change.

When I was a teenager, reading for me was as normal, as unremarkable as eating or breathing. Reading gave flight to my imagination and strengthened my understanding of the world, the society I lived in, and myself. More importantly, reading was fun, a way to live more than one life as I immersed myself in each good book I read.

One of the main reasons I write fiction is to try to understand what life is like for people other than myself, to try to see the world through my characters' eyes. I often find that I'm able to understand certain emotional truths about my own life by exploring things from different vantages.

Books have the power to be the light we are seeking at crucial moments in our lives. Reading helps us realize we are not alone, that we can change our circumstances and even achieve the impossible.

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

I have many reasons why I think reading is really important. It provided for me a refuge, especially during difficult times. It provided me with the notion that I could find an ending that was different from what was happening to me at the time.

Whether it's a song or a television show, or a book or poem, art is the thing that cracks me open and encourages me to go on a deeper journey to find my own compassion and empathy and humanity.

When books are opened, we discover that we have wings

The more I've learned about me, the more I'm interested in others.

Maybe what I'm trying to do is heal others. I think what we're trying to do in theater is heal someone.

Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we're someone else, disrupting the delusion that we're permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we're saved!) other people are real again, and we're fond of them.

From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings.

I believe that if you can discover something of the truth of a person, then you will start to understand, and to understand is to move towards, if not like, then at least an empathy of some kind.

You know, something happened to me when I became 70. I started to feel a tremendous love for the human race, and life and this planet, the universe, the whole shebang.

You change the world by being yourself.

It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

When characters change on screen, it makes you feel better about yourself. You think, 'Oh I change too, I'm constantly becoming a better person.'

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

Through literacy you can begin to see the universe. Through music you can reach anybody. Between the two there is you, unstoppable.

I never realized I could love people as much as I do now.

A love of books has opened so many doors for me. Stories have inspired me and taught me to aspire.