Elif Shafak's speech

"I feel connected to each language in a different way. For me, like millions of other people around the world today, English is an acquired language. When you're a late comer to a language, what happens is that you live there with a continual and perpetuous frustration. As late comers, we always want to say more, to say better jokes, better things but we end up saying less because there is a gap between the mind and the tongue. And that gap is very intimidating. But if we manage not to be frightened by it, it's also stimulating. And this is what i discovered in Boston: that frustration was very stimulating."
Elif Shafak