Every culture has something to be ashamed of, but every culture also has the right to change, to challenge negative traditions, and create to new ones.

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

I see people who talk about America, and then undermine it by not paying attention to its soul, to its poetry. I see polarization, reductionism and superficiality.

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

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.

It is amazing how, when all possibilities seem to be taken away from you, the minutest opening can become a great freedom.

In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, especially with regard to women's rights, as anti-Islamic and pro-Western, justifying its brutalities by ascribing them to Islam and Iran's culture.