Azar Nafisi Quotes - Page 2

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• 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

  Dancing, Mind, Brutality

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.76, Random House

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• The novels were an escape from reality in the sense that we could marvel at their beauty and perfection. 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

  Reality, Perfection, Speechless

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• What we search for in fiction is not so much reality, but the epiphany of truth.

  Azar Nafisi

  Reality, Fiction, Epiphany

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.3, Random House

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• 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

  Shoes, Different, Literature

  "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books". Book by Azar Nafisi, www.sfgate.com. 2003.

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• 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

  Pain, Lying, Heart

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.132, Random House

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• Unfortunately for governments like that of Iran, when they forbid something, people become more interested.

  Azar Nafisi

  Government, Iran, People

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. February 5, 2004.

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• 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

  Home, Imagination, Expectations

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.94, Random House

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• For more than 30 years the Islamic regime and its apologists have tried to dismiss women's struggle in Iran as part of a western ploy.

  Azar Nafisi

  Struggle, Islamic, Iran

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• We do not read in order to turn great works of fiction into simplistic replicas of our own realities, we read for the pure, sensual, and unadulterated pleasure of reading. And if we do so, our reward is the discovery of the many hidden layers within these works that do not merely reflect reality but reveal a spectrum of truths, thus intrinsically going against the grain of totalitarian mindsets.

  Azar Nafisi

  Reading, Reality, Discovery

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• Basically, fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. In the same way that Hitler evoked a mythological religion of German purity and the glory of the past, the Islamists use religion to evoke emotions and passions in people who have been oppressed for a long time in order to reach their purpose.

  Azar Nafisi

  Passion, Past, Order

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• 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

  Art, Betrayal, Lying

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• 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

  Pain, Loss, Unique

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• After the rigged Iranian presidential elections in 2009, the Islamic regime attacked the 'humanities' as the main source of protests, the most effective tool used by the West, especially America, to corrupt and incite Iranian youth, and finally closed down all the Humanities departments in Iran's universities.

  Azar Nafisi

  Islamic, America, Iran

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• I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.

  Azar Nafisi

  Memories, Rain, Path

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.59, Random House

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• 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

  Reality, Limits, Fairy Tale

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.47, Random House

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• When I walked down the streets, I asked myself, are these my people?, is this my hometown, am I who I am?

  Azar Nafisi

  Who I Am, People, Hometown

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.74, Random House

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• She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and vulnerable at the same time.

  Azar Nafisi

  Honesty, People, Honest

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• I think Islam is in a sense, in crisis. It needs to question and re-question itself.

  Azar Nafisi

  Thinking, Islam, Needs

  Interview with David Brancaccio, www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

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• 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

  Dream, Lonely, Past

  Azar Nafisi (2015). “Reading Lolita in Tehran”, p.118, Penguin UK

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• 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

  Attitude, Evil, World

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.330, Random House

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• I have a recurring fantasy that one more article has been added to the Bill of Rights: the right to free access to imagination.

  Azar Nafisi

  Rights, Imagination, Bills

  Azar Nafisi (2015). “Reading Lolita in Tehran”, p.337, Penguin UK

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• Imagine you are walking down a leafy path...The sun is receding, and you are walking alone, caressed by the breezy light of the late afternoon. Then suddenly, you feel a large drop on your right arm. Is it raining? You look up. The sky is still deceptively sunny...seconds later another drop. Then, with the sun still perched in the sky, you are drenched in a shower of rain. This is how memories invade me, abruptly and unexpectedly.

  Azar Nafisi

  Memories, Rain, Light

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.59, Random House

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• The best work of literature to represent the American Dream is 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It shows us how dreaming can be tainted by reality, and that if you don't compromise, you may suffer.

  Azar Nafisi

  Dream, Reality, Suffering

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• The stories from Iran's present and past are reminders that freedom, democracy and human rights, or fundamentalism, fascism and terrorism are not geographically and culturally determined, but universal.

  Azar Nafisi

  Past, Rights, Iran

  "Iran’s Women: Canaries in the Coal Mine" by Azar Nafisi, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 9, 2010.

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• The more we die, the stronger we will become

  Azar Nafisi

  Stronger, Dies

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.104, Random House

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