Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

by Azar Nafisi

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.

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 worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes.

We could not openly articulate what we wished, but we could by our silence show our indifference to the regime’s demands.

Thus, Dr. Sloper commits the most unforgivable crime in fiction—blindness. Pity is the password,

Lack of empathy was to my mind the central sin of the regime, from which all the others flowed.

We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.—Henry James

At the core of the fight for political rights is the desire to protect ourselves, to prevent the political from intruding on our individual lives.

“You used to preach to us all that she ignored politics, not because she didn’t know any better but because she didn’t allow her work, her imagination, to be swallowed up by the society around her.

They risk ostracism and poverty to gain love and companionship, and to embrace that elusive goal at the heart of democracy: the right to choose.

It’s frightening to be free, to have to take responsibility for your decisions.

Evil in Austen, as in most great fiction, lies in the inability to “see” others, hence to empathize with them. What is frightening is that this blindness can exist in the best of us (Eliza Bennet) as well as the worst (Humbert).

Once evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual.