لا يعنى الصبر أن تتحمل المصاعب سلبا، يل يعنى أن تكون بعيد النظر بحيث تثق بالنتيجة النهائية التي ستتمخض عن أي عملية. ماذا يعني الصبر؟ إنه يعني أن تنظر… - Elif Şafak

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 psychological barrier, a heart. What you have broken will haunt you. To be an emigré, therefore, means to forever bear shards of glass in your pockets. It is easy to forget they are there, light and minuscule as they are, and go on with your life, your little ambitions and important plans, but at the slightest contact the shards will remind you of their presence. They will cut you deep.

there were three fountains of wisdom from which every artisan should drink abundantly: books, work and roads. Reading, practising and travelling.

But human memory resembles a late-night reveller who has had a few too many drinks: hard as it tries, it just cannot follow a straight line. It staggers through a maze of inversions, often moving in dizzying zigzags, immune to reason and liable to collapse altogether.