A Quote by Elif Safak
We're stuck. We're stuck between the East and the West. Between the past and the future. On the one hand there are the secular modernists, so proud of the regime they constructed, you cannot breathe a critical word. They've got the army and half of the state on their side. On the other hand there are the conventional traditionalist, so infatuated with the Ottoman past, you cannot breathe a critical word. They've got the general public and the remaining half of the state on their side.
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The moment has come, as we enter the teenies, to forget the idea of a Palestinian state existing side by side with a Jewish state, and to argue and agitate instead for the only remaining, viable and democratic option: a single, secular and binational state for Israelis and Palestinians.
We wouldn't have withstood for two years and a half. We would have disintegration of the army, disintegration of the whole institution in the state ; we would have disintegration of Syria if that was the case. It can't be tolerated in Syria. I'm talking about the normal reaction of the people. If it's not a national army, it cannot have the support, and if it doesn't have the public support of every sect, it cannot do its job and advance recently. It cannot. The army of the family doesn't make national war.
To love very much is to love inadequately; we love-that is all. Love cannot be modified without being nullified. Love is a short word but it contains everything. Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being. We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood, we breathe love as we breathe the air, we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts. Nothing more exists for us. Love is not a word; it is a wordless state indicated by four letters.
Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veilhangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating.
Whenever we remember a series of events, we remember them different. We are constantly changing. It's a flaw, but on the other hand, when we say a word, the meaning is not what you put into it. Rather, the meaning of the word is all of the past usages of that word. Like this cloud that makes up the meaning of the word. It's your subject if you write. For instance what you put in that word and what you assume it means, even its flaw. It has a general agreement.
The most striking difference between little ones and grownups is that little ones cannot worry, and they cannot worry because they have no past and no future. They live only in the present moment. Just watch children. If they play, they play and don't even hear us call them and don't notice anything that is going on around them. If they eat, they eat; if they sleep, they sleep. There is a beautiful English word which describes how they do whatever they do, they do it 'whole-heartedly', whereas grownups always are half-hearted.
I come from a town in Washington state that might not be too familiar to Clevelanders called Chelan. It's really beautiful. It's about two-and-a-half hours east of Seattle and two-and-a-half hours west of Spokane. It's right in the middle of the state.
I am only 33, I've got a lot to do. This is the first half of my career. I'm looking forward to the future and I'm proud about the past.
Live. And live well. Breathe. Breathe in and breathe deeply. Be present. Do not be past. Do not be future. Be now.
There's been this sort of attitude in media in the past in this country that it's not our job to fall on one side or the other. But what I'm suggesting is that in this day and age, there is no deciding not to fall on one side of the other. You're going to be on a side, so you've got to lean in and choose the right one.
The difference to me is not between the believers on one hand and the nonbelievers on the other hand. It's between people who carry in their hearts some sense of what the word "God," at least to me, means, which is a loving, creating, everlastingly renewing presence deeply concerned with the well-being of the earth and all its creatures.
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in atime of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.
The written word is the link between the past and the future.
If we are not empty, we become a block of matter. We cannot breathe, we cannot think. To be empty means to be alive, to breathe in and to breathe out. We cannot be alive if we are not empty. Emptiness is impermanence, it is change. We should not complain about impermanence, because without impermanence, nothing is possible.
It pains me to see the gap that exists in the public's consciousness - religious and secular - between the notion of Israel as a Jewish state and as a democratic state.
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