Reading Lolita in Tehran Quotes

“At that time, she had worn the scarf as a testament to her faith. Her decision was a voluntary act. When the revolution forced the scarf on others, her action became meaningless.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“How do you tell someone she has to learn to love herself and her own body before she can be loved or love?”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“In his forward to the English edition of Invitation to a Beheading (1959), Nabokov reminds the reader that his novel does not offer 'tout pour tous.' Nothing of the kind. 'It is,' he claims, 'a violin in the void.'

[...]

There was something, both in his fiction and in his life, that we instinctively related to and grasped, the possibility of a boundless freedom when all options are taken away. I think that is what drove me to create the class. My main link with the outside world had been the university, and now that I had severed that link, there on the brink of the void, I could invent the violin or be devoured by the void.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“I always had a hankering for the security of impossible dreams.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“This is Tehran for me: its absences were more real than its presences”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“كانت مستاءة جداً من فكرة أن حجابها، الذي هو بمثابة رمز للعلاقة المقدسة بينها وبين الله، كان قد أصبح في ذلك الوقت أداة بيد السلطة، جاعلين من النسوة اللواتي ارتدينه رموزاً وشعارات سياسية”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“One cancels the other, and yet without one, the other is incomplete. In the first photograph, standing there in our black robes and scarves, we are as we had been shaped by someone else’s dreams. In the second, we appear as we imagined ourselves. In neither could we feel completely at home.”
― 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

“Nabokov calls every great novel a fairy tale, I said. Well, I would agree. First, let me remind you that fairy tales abound with frightening witches who eat children and wicked stepmothers who poison their beautiful stepdaughters and weak fathers who leave their children behind in forests. But the magic comes from the power of good, that force which tells us we need not give in to the limitations and restrictions imposed on us by McFate, as Nabokov called it.

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

“Could one really concentrate on one’s job when what preoccupied the faculty was how to excise the word wine from a Hemingway story, when they decided not to teach Brontë because she appeared to condone adultery?”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“اساءت الثورة الاسلامية للاسلام أكثر من أي غريب كان يمكن ان يسيء، وذلك باستخدام الإسلام وسيلة للايستبداد والجو”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“فكلّ منا يضمُر في داخله يهوذا لمسيحه الخاص”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“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

“Later, Nima told us that the son of one of his friends, a ten-year-old, had awakened his parents in horror telling them he had been having an “illegal dream.” He had been dreaming that he was at the seaside with some men and women who were kissing, and he did not know what to do. He kept repeating to his parents that he was having illegal dreams.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“One of the most wonderful things about Pride and Prejudice is the variety of voices it embodies. There are so many different forms of dialogue: between several people, between two people, internal dialogue and dialogue through letters. All tensions are created and resolved through dialogue. Austen's ability to create such multivocality, such diverse voices and intonations in relation and in confrontation within a cohesive structure, is one of the best examples of the democratic aspect of the novel. In Austen's novels, there are spaces for oppositions that do not need to eliminate each other in order to exist. There is also space - not just space but a necessity - for self-reflection and self-criticism. Such reflection is the cause of change. We needed no message, no outright call for plurality, to prove our point. All we needed was to reach and appreciate the cacophony of voices to understand its democratic imperative. There was where Austen's danger lay.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Imagination in these works is equated with empathy; we can't experience all that others have gone through, but we can understand even the most monstrous individuals in works of fiction. 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

“Is it possible to write a reverent novel,” said Nassrin, “and to have it be good? Besides, the
contract with the reader is that this is not reality, it’s an invented world. There must be some blasted
space in life,” she added crossly, “where we can be offensive, for God’s sake.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“She resented the fact that her veil, which to her was a symbol of her sacred relationship to God, had now become an instrument of power, turning the women who wore them into political signs and symbols. Where do your loyalties lie, Mr. Bahri, with Islam or the state?”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Again she repeated that she would never get married, never ever. She said that for her a man always existed in books, that she would spend the rest of her life with Mr. Darcy—even in the books, there were few men for her.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“و لكننا في ذلك الوقت لم نكن قد وعينا بعدُ إلى أي مدى كنا نخونُ أحلامنا.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“You don't understand their mentality. They won't accept your resignation because they don't think you have the right to quit. They are the ones who decide how long you should stay and when you should be dispensed with. More than anything else, it was this arbitrariness that had become unbearable.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“We speak of facts, yet facts exist only partially to us if they are not repeated and re-created through emotions, thoughts and feelings. To me it seemed as if we had not really existed, or only half existed, because we could not imaginatively realize ourselves and communicate to the world, because we had used works of imagination to serve as handmaidens to some political ploy.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“It was one of those rare nights when I was kept awake not by my nightmares and anxieties but by something exciting and exhilarating. Most nights I lay awake waiting for some unexpected disaster…I think I somehow felt that as long as I was conscious, nothing bad could happen…”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Only Catherine has the capacity to change and mature, although here...our heroine pays a dear price for this change. And she does take a form of revenge on both her father and her suitor: she refuses to give in to them. In the end, she has her triumph.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“We were thirsty for some form of beauty, even in an incomprehensible, overintellectual, abstract film with no subtitles and censored out of recognition. There was a sense of wonder at being in a public place for the first time in years without fear or anger, being in a place with a crowd of strangers that was not a demonstration, a protest rally, a breadline or a public execution...For a brief time we experienced collectively the kind of awful beauty that can only be grasped at through extreme anguish and expressed through art.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“It is said that the personal is political. That is not true, of course. 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. Personal and political are interdependent but not one and the same thing. The realm of imagination is a bridge between them, constantly refashioning one in terms of the other. Plato's philosopher-king knew this and so did the blind censor, so it was perhaps not surprising that the Islamic Republic's first task had been to blur the lines and boundaries between the personal and the political, thereby destroying both.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Some within the government and some former revolutionaries had finally realized that there was no way the Islamic regime could make us intellectuals vanish. In forcing us underground, it had also made us more appealing, more dangerous and, in a strange way, more powerful. It had made us scarce and, because of this, also in demand.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“I say “then, as now” because the revolution that imposed the scarf on others did not relieve Mahshid of her loneliness. Before the revolution, she could in a sense take pride in her isolation. At that time, she had worn the scarf as a testament to her faith. Her decision was a voluntary act. When the revolution forced the scarf on others, her action became meaningless.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Love is love, but there are so many ways of articulating it.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books