Motherlands are castles made of glass. In order to leave them, you have to break something – a wall, a social convention, a cultural norm, a psycholo… - Elif Şafak

لا يوجد شخصان متشابهان، ولا يخفق قلبان لهما الإيقاع ذاته. ولو أراد الله أن نكون متشابهين، لخلقنا متشابهين. لذلك، فإن عدم احترام الاختلافات وفرض أفكارك على الآخرين، يعني عدم احترام النظام المقدس الذي أرساه الله.

You think you cannot live anymore. You think that the light of your soul has been put out and that you will stay in the dark forever. But when you are engulfed by such solid darkness, when you have both eyes closed to the world, a third eye opens in your heart. And only then do you come to realize that eyesight conflicts with inner knowledge. No eye sees so clear and sharp as the eye of love. After grief comes another season, another valley, another you. And the lover who is nowhere to be found, you start to see everywhere.
You see him in the drop of water that falls into the ocean, in the high tide that follows the waxing of the moon, or in the morning wind that spreads its fresh smell; you see him in the geomancy symbols in the sand, in the tiny particles of rock glittering under the sun, in the smile of a newborn baby, or in your throbbing vein. How can you say Shams is gone when he is everywhere and in everything?

God is a meticulous clockmaker. So precise is His order that everything on earth happens in its own time. Neither a minute late nor a minute early. And for everyone without exception, the clock works accurately. For each there is a time to love and a time to die.