East, West, South or North makes little difference. No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey, a journey within. If you tra… - Elif Şafak

No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey a journey within.

Yeah, we should all line up along the Bosphorus Bridge and puff as hard as we can to shove this city in the direction of the West. If that doesn't work, we'll try the other way, see if we can veer to the East. It's no good to be in between. International politics does not appreciate ambiguity.

People always told her to fight depression. But I have a feeling that as soon as we see something as our enemy we make it stronger. Like a boomerang. You hurl it away, it comes back and hits you with equal force.

There was something childlike in the way grown-ups had a need for stories. They held a naive belief that by telling an inspiring anecdote-the right fable at the right time-they could lift their children's moods, motivate them to great achievements and simply change reality. There was no point in telling them that life was more complicated than that and words less magical than they presumed.