Reading Lolita in Tehran Quotes

“As we grown-ups talked and speculated, my five-year-old daughter looked intently out of the window. Suddenly she turned around and shouted, "Mommy, Mommy, he is not dead! Women are still wearing their scarves." I always associate Khomeini's death with Negar's simple pronouncement—for she was right: the day women did not wear the scarf in public would be the real day of his death and the end of his revolution. Until then, we would continue to live with him.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Fiction was not a panacea, but it did offer us a critical way of appraising and grasping the world—not just our world but that other world that had become the object of our desires.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“incapacity for true dialogue implies an incapacity for tolerance, self-reflection and empathy.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Curiously, the novels we escaped into led us finally to question and prod our own realities, about which we felt so helplessly speechless.”
― 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, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“She had not learned from reading it that adultery was good or that we should all become shysters. Did people all go on strike or head west after reading Steinbeck? Did they go whaling after reading Melville? Are people not a little more complex than that?”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“The feelings I thought I had left behind returned when, almost nineteen years later, the Islamic regime would once again turn against its students. This time it would open fire on those it had admitted to the universities, those who were its own children, the children of the revolution. Once more my students would go to the hospitals in search of the murdered bodies that where stolen by the guards and vigilantes and try to prevent them from stealing the wounded.

I would like to know where Mr. Bahri is right now, at this moment, and to ask him: How did it all turn out, Mr. Bahri - was this your dream, your dream of the revolution? Who will pay for all those ghosts in my memories? Who will pay for the snapshots of the murdered and the executed that we hid in our shoes and closets as we moved on to other things? Tell me, Mr. Bahri-or, to use that odd expression of Gatsby's, Tell me, old sport- what shell we do with all this corpses on our hands?”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“How could God be so cruel as to create a Muslim woman with so much flesh and so little sex appeal?”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“As women, do we have the same rights as men to enjoy sex? How many of us would say yes, we do have a right, we have a equal right to enjoy sex, and if our husbands don't satisfy us, then we have a right to seek satisfaction elsewhere.”
― 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?...”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Dreams,Mr.Nazari,are perfect ideals,complete in themselves.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“إنه من المخيف حقاً أن يحس الانسان بالحرية، وأن يكون مسؤولاً عن قراراته!”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“My toe as a lethal weapon!”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Tehran looked the way most of its remaining citizens must have felt: sad, forlorn, and defenseless, yet not without a certain dignity. The adhesive tape pasted on the window-panes to prevent the implosion of shattered glass told the story of its suffering, a suffering made more poignant because of its newly recovered beauty, the fresh green of trees, washed by spring showers, the blossoms and the rising snowcapped mountains now so near, as if pasted across the sky.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“There was something, both in fiction and in his life (Nabokov), that we instinctively related to and grasped, the possibility of a boundless freedom when all options are taken away.

I could invent violin or be devoured by the void.”
― 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 class, we were discussing the concept of the villain in the novel. I had mentioned that Humbert was a villain because he lacked curiosity about other people and their lives, even about the person he loved most, Lolita. Humbert, like most dictators, was interested only in his own vision of other people. He had created the Lolita he desired, and would not budge from that image.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Those of us living in the Islamic Republic of Iran grasped both the tragedy and absurdity of the
cruelty to which we were subjected. We had to poke fun at our own misery in order to survive.
We also instinctively recognized poshlust-not just in others, but in ourselves. This was one reason
that art and literature became so essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity.
What Nabokov captured was the texture of life in a totalitarian society, where you are completely
alone in an illusory world full of false promises, where you can no longer differentiate between
your savior and your executioner.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Well, it's like this: if you're forced into having sex with someone you dislike, you make your mind blank—you pretend to be somewhere else, you tend to forget your body, you hate your body. That's what we do here. We are constantly pretending to be somewhere else—we either plan it or dream it.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“There is seldom a physical description of a character or scene in Pride and Prejudice and yet we feel that we have seen each of these characters and their intimate worlds; we feel we know them, and sense their surroundings. We can see Elizabeth's reaction to Darcy's denunciation of her beauty, Mrs. Bennet chattering at the dinner table or Elizabeth and Darcy walking in and out of the shadows of the Pemberley estate. The amazing thing is that all of this is created mainly through tone—different tones of voice, words that become haughty and naughty, soft, harsh, coaxing, insinuating, insensible, vain.

The sense of touch that is missing from Austen's novels is replaced by a tension, an erotic texture of sounds and silences. She manages to create a feeling of longing by setting characters who want each other at odds.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“The fact is I don't know what I want, and I don't know if I am doing the right thing. I've always been told what is right—and suddenly I don't know anymore. I know what I don't want, but I don't know what I want,' she said, looking down at the ice cream she had hardly touched.”
― 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. My students witnessed it in show trials on television and enacted it every time they went out into the streets dressed as they were told to dress. They had not become part of the crowd who watched the executions, but they did not have the power to protest them, either.

The only way to leave the circle, to stop dancing with the jailer, is to find a way to preserve one's individuality, that unique quality which evades description but differentiates one human being from the other. That is why, in their world, rituals—empty rituals—become so central.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“These students of mine, like the rest of their generation, were different from mine in one fundamental aspect. My generation complained of a loss, the void in our lives that was created when our past was stolen from us, making us exile in our own country. Yet we had a past to compare with the present; we had memories and images of what had been taken away. But my girls spoke constantly of stolen kisses, films they had never seen and the wind they had never felt on their skin. This generation had no past. Their memory was of a half-articulated desire, something they had never had. It was this lack, their sense of longing for the ordinary, taken-for-granted aspects of life, that gave their words a certain luminous quality akin to poetry.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“One can believe James's claim to an "imagination of disaster"; so many of his protagonists are unhappy in the end, and yet he gives them an aura of victory. It is because these characters depend on such high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a movement inward that makes them whole.”
― 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...forcing others to listen to the most horrendous experiences and yet denying them the moment of empathy: don't feel sorry for me....This is nothing, nothing really.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“هي فتاة مشتت الذهن غافلة ألا يكفي انها لم تتزوج بعد”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“أيها القاريء احتاج منك الى ان تتخيلنا فعلاً لأننا لن نظهر اذا لم تفعل”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Dicono che il privato è politico; non è vero, naturalmente. Anzi, al centro della lotta per i diritti politici c'è proprio il desiderio di proteggere noi stessi, di impedire al politico di intromettersi nella vita privata. Pubblico e privato sono legati da un rapporto di interdipendenza, ma ciò non significa che siano la stessa cosa. Il regno dell'immaginazione è come un ponte che li modifica di continuo l'uno rispetto all'altro. Il re filosofo di Platone lo sapeva, e così il nostro censore cieco; non c'è quindi da stupirsi che il primo obiettivo della Repubblica Islamica fosse quello di eliminare il confine tra i due ambiti, finendo per distruggerli entrambi.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Chi sa ballare alla persiana?” domando. Tutte si voltano a guardare Sanaz. Lei si schermisce, fa di no con la tessta. Cominciamo ad insistere, a incoraggiarla, formiamo un cerchio intorno a lei. Quando inizia a ballare, piuttosto a disagio, battiamo le mani e ci mettiamo a canticchiare. Nassrin ci chiede di fare più piano. Sanaz riprende, quasi vergognandosi, a piccoli passi, muovendo il bacino con grazia sensuale. Continuiamo a ridere e a scherzare, e lei si fa più ardita; muove la testa a destra e sinistra, e ogni parte del suo corpo vibra; balla anche con le dita e le mani. Sul suo volto compare un'espressione particolare, spavalda, ammicante, che attrae, cattura, e al tempo stesso sfugge e si nasconde. Appena smette di ballare, tuttavia, il suo potere svanisce.
Esistono varie forme di seduzione, ma quella che emana dalle danze tradizionali persiane è unica, una miscela di impudenza e sottigliezza di cui non mi pare esistano eguali nel mondo occidentale. Ho visto donne di ogni estrazione sociale assumere lo stesso sguardo di Sanaz, sornione, seducente e l'ho ritrovato anni dopo sul viso di Leyly, una mia amica molto sofisticata che aveva studiato in Francia, vedendola ballare al ritmo di una musica piena di parole come naz e eshveh e kereshmeh, che potremmo tradurre con “malizia”, “provocazione”, “civetteria”, senza però riuscire a rendere l'idea.
QUesto tipo di seduzione è al tempo stesso elusiva, vigorosa e tangibile. Il corpo si contorce, ruota su se stesso, si annoda e si snoda. Le mani si aprono e si chiudono, i fianchi sembrano avvitarsi e poi sciogliersi. Ed è tutto calcolato: ogni passo ha il suo effetto, e così il successivo. È un ballo che seduce in un modo che Daisy Miller non si sognava neanche. È sfacciato, ma tutt'altro che arrendevole. Ed è tutto nei gesti di Sanaz. La veste nera e il velo - che ne incorniciano il volto scavato, gli occhi grandi e il corpo snello e fragile - conferiscono uno strano fascino ai suoi movimenti. Con ogni mossa, Sanaz sembra liberarsene: la vesta diventa sempre più leggera, e aggiunge mistero all'enigma della danza.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books