Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

by Azar Nafisi

In forcing us underground, it had also made us more appealing, more dangerous and, in a strange way, more powerful.

What is more important, she countered, the veil or the thousands of young people eager to learn?

All restaurants run by non-Muslims had to carry this sign on their doors so that good Muslims, who considered all non-Muslims dirty and did not eat from the same dishes, would be forewarned.

the reason I am so popular is that I give others back what they need to find in themselves.

what you’ve absorbed from this culture is that anything that gives pleasure is bad, and is immoral.

All during the meeting, as befitted a truly Muslim man, he did not look me in the eyes.

I had by now become something of an expert in the manners of pious men. They showed their opinion of you by the manner in which they avoided looking at you.

My husband slept or tried to sleep through the raids, but I would take two pillows, a few candles and my book to a small hall that separated the children’s bedroom from ours

Its kinda lonely for both adults

he cannot decide if she is a “flirt” or a “nice” girl.

what Winterbourne was afraid of was not his aunt but Miss Daisy Miller’s charms.

For a moment I believe I really was diverted from the explosions, and I did manage to draw a line around the words You needn’t be afraid.

knowing that your own relief implied someone else’s death.

became curious as to why the realistic novel was never truly successful in our country.

There were reprimands posted about the color of our uniforms, codes of conduct, but never a notice about a talk, a film or a book.

how the absence of “the absolute” had been the cause of the downfall of Western civilization.

Lol familiar

We complemented each other, because my knowledge was impulsive and untidy, and hers meticulous and absolute.

Lol what are you bringing to the table then

With James, they think they understand him, or that they should understand him, so they just get angry.

what became known as “human wave” attacks, where thousands of Iranian soldiers, mainly very young boys ranging in age from ten to sixteen and middle-aged and old men, cleared the minefields by walking over them.

one knew that the missile would deliver the final message at a moment exactly predetermined and that there was no point in trying to escape it.

I loathed so having lived on and on into anything so hideous and horrible.”

As his biographer Leon Edel would later say: “. . . the world seemed to find too much comfort in him and he had to often protect himself against its weeping too profusely on his shoulders.”

two quotations about James’s wartime experiences. I had written them out for Nassrin, but I never showed them to her.

His affinity with England, and with Europe in general, came from that sense of civilization, a tradition of culture and humaneness. But now he had also seen Europe’s depravity, its fatigue with its own past, its predatory, cynical nature.

“We must for dear life make our own counter-realities.”

my students had developed a strange concept of fortune.

Kinda judgmental like u want em dead?

What strange places my students met, from what dark corners did they bring me news! I could not travel, I cannot travel even now to those places, no matter how many times I hear about them.

don’t know why people who are better off always think that those less fortunate than themselves don’t want to have the good things—that they don’t want to listen to good music, eat good food or read Henry James.

Washington Square seems straightforward enough, yet the characters cheat you: they act contrary to expectation,

She is the inverse of our ideas of what a heroine should be: hefty, healthy, plain, dull, literal and honest.

He is guilty of the same crime of which he accuses Morris, namely, lack of love for his daughter.

A hero becomes one who safeguards his or her individual integrity at almost any cost.

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

these characters depend to such a high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness.

I opened it the way we used to open Hafez, closing our eyes, asking our question and letting our finger rest somewhere at random.

Book fortune telling!

They each took hold of one end and put the corpse in the trunk of the car. They then proceeded to drive to a garden he had heard of outside Tehran for the burial.

As u do

There were many such instances, when expressions of sympathy could not be exchanged.

Iraq would accept a cease-fire if it could fire the last missile. It was like a game played between two children—what mattered most was who would get the last word.

a time when Tehran was in deepest mourning, it was able to put on its gayest face.

It seemed as if, apart from literature, the political had devoured us, eliminating the personal or private.

to paraphrase Hannah Arendt, set a seal on the fact that they had never really existed.

In his lecture on Madame Bovary Nabokov claimed that all great novels were great fairy tales.

“Mommy, Mommy, he is not dead! Women are still wearing their scarves.”

We gave people more rank and space in death than in life.

Now I know how fourteen hundred years back they created the imams and prophets, he said—just like this guy. So none of it was true.

Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

There is a give-and-take in the dance, a constant adapting to the partner’s needs and steps. Note for example how terrible Mr. Collins is on the dance floor, as is the uncouth Thorpe in Northanger Abbey. Their inability to dance well is a sign of their inability to adapt themselves to the needs of their partners.

I can’t quite hear Miss Darcy, shy and reserved as she is,

felt as if her uncle and I were co-conspirators, leading young Yassi astray.

“Over here, as his mother keeps reminding us, we are somebody, but over there . . .”

“If Sanaz had an inkling of sense, she’d just go, or marry the guy, go there and then divorce him.

Lol that happens too