I believe in empathy. I believe in the kind of empathy that is created through imagination and through intimate, personal relationships. I am a writer and a teacher, so much of my time is spent interpreting stories and connecting to other individuals. It is the urge to know more about ourselves and others that creates empathy. Through imagination and our desire for rapport, we transcend our limitations, freshen our eyes, and are able to look at ourselves and the world through a new and alternative lens.

It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.

I'm a perfectly equipped failure.

When I was teaching at the University of Tehran we were struggling against the implementation of the revolution rules.

Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.

You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again.

A bad author can take the most moral issue and make you want to just never, ever think about that moral issue.