quotes by Azar Nafisi

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth."
— Azar Nafisi

"A novel is not an allegory.... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing."
— Azar Nafisi

"You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil..."
— Azar Nafisi

"I told them this novel was an American classic, in many ways the quintessential American novel. There were other contenders: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Moby-Dick, The Scarlet Letter. Some cite its subject matter, the American Dream, to justify this distinction. We in ancient countries have our past--we obsess over the past. They, the Americans, have a dream: they feel nostalgia about the promise of the future."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"Memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"There is little consolation in the fact that millions of people are unhappier than we are. Why should other people's misery make us happier or more content?"
— Azar Nafisi

"The revolution taught me not to be consoled by other people's miseries, not to feel thankful because so many others had suffered more. Pain and loss, like love and joy, are unique and personal; they cannot be modified by comparison to others. "
— Azar Nafisi (Things I've Been Silent About)

""A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.""
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"When I walked down the streets, I asked myself, are these my people?, is this my hometown, am I who I am?"
— Azar Nafisi

"Once evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual. How does the soul survive? is the essential question. And the response is: through love and imagination."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"A novel is not an allegory...It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefor both inflexible and vulnerable at the same time."
— Azar Nafisi

"“A novel is not moral in the usual sense of the word. It can be called moral when it shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in.” "
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"“It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.”"
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place...like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again."
— Azar Nafisi

"those who judge must take all aspects of an individual's personality into account."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"Going away isn't going to help as much as you think. The memory stays with you, and the stain. It's not something you slough off once you leave."
— Azar Nafisi

"I wish wish I could steal the intricacies of language. But give my kids a break—remember, most of them were fed on Steinbeck’s The Pearl. "
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed to immutable. "
— Azar Nafisi

"We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"A novel...is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"It wasn't courage that motivated this casual, impersonal manner of treating so much pain; it was a special brand of cowardice, a destructive defense mechanism, forcing others to listen to the most horrendous experiences and yet denying them the moment of empathy: don't feel sorry for me; nothing is too big for me to handle. This is nothing, nothing really."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"I have a recurring fantasy that one more article has been added to the Bill of Rights: the right to free access to imagination. I have come to believe that genuine democracy cannot exist without the freedom to imagine and the right to use imaginative works without any restrictions. To have a whole life, one must have the possibility of publicly shaping and expressing private worlds, dreams, thoughts and desires, of constantly having access to a dialogue between the public and private worlds. How else do we know that we have existed, felt, desired, hated, feared?"
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

""What we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.""
— Azar Nafisi

"Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe..."
— Azar Nafisi

"“A novel is not an allegory…It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don’t enter that world, hold your breath with the characters, and become involved in their destiny, you won’t be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing."
"
— Azar Nafisi

"“With fear come the lies and the justifications that, no matter how convincing, lower our self-esteem.”"
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"“Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies.”"
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"“The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, participating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality.”"
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"“It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else’s shoes and understand the other’s different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless. Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed. But if you understand their different dimensions you cannot easily murder them. . .”"
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"“The reason I am so popular is that I give others back what they need to find in themselves. You need me not because I tell you what I want you to do but because I articulate and justify what you want to do.”"
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"...what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth."
— Azar Nafisi

""Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels--the biggest sin is to be blind to others' problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.""
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"Such an act [testifying for an accused prison guard of the Shah's regime] can only be accomplished by someone who is engrossed in literature, has learned that every individual has different dimensions to his personality.... Those who judge must take all aspects of an individual's personality into account. It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else's shoes and understand the other's different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless. Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed. But if you understand their different dimensions you cannot easily murder them.... If we have learned this one lesson from Dr. A our society would have been in a much better shape today."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is called democratic - not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so. Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels - the biggest sin is to be blind to others' problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"i could have told him to learn from Gatsby. from the lonely, isolated Gatsby, who also tried to retrieve his past and give flash and blood to a fancy, a dream that was never meant to be more than a dream."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"The autumn landscape was gold and blood red, bejeweled, magnificent."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"She reminded me of a warning I was fond of repeating: do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)

"...a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing."
— Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)