When I walked down the streets, I asked myself, are these my people?, is this my hometown, am I who I am?
Azar NafisiFor 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 NafisiA 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 NafisiI finally returned to Iran in 1979, when I got my degree in English and American literature, and stayed for 18 years in the Islamic republic.
Azar NafisiWe in ancient countries have our past- we obsess over the past. They, the Americans, have a dream: they feel nostalgia about the promise of the future.
Azar NafisiThe negative side of the American Dream comes when people pursue success at any cost, which in turn destroys the vision and the dream.
Azar NafisiI 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.
Azar NafisiIn 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 NafisiWhat dazzles us in Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra are not the alluring mythologies about the evasive queen, but the astonishing if rare historical facts that Schiff has meticulously and lovingly excavated. Schiff offers not just Cleopatra's story but the story of an amazing era, one that has vanished but still affects us, questioning the way we look at myth, history, and ourselves.
Azar NafisiWe all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.
Azar NafisiEvery great work of art ... is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life.
Azar NafisiOnce evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual. How does the soul survive? is the essential question. And the response is: through love and imagination.
Azar NafisiDo 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 NafisiReality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.
Azar NafisiMost 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 NafisiA novel is not an allegory.... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing.
Azar NafisiWe 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 NafisiOnce we know of atrocities we cannot remain silent, and knowledge inevitably leads to an urge to protect the innocent.
Azar NafisiEvery fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies.
Azar NafisiNone of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.
Azar NafisiThe 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 NafisiI have a recurring fantasy that one more article has been added to the Bill of Rights: the right to free access to imagination.
Azar NafisiUnfortunately for governments like that of Iran, when they forbid something, people become more interested.
Azar NafisiMemories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally.
Azar NafisiThe crisis besetting America is not just an economic or political crisis; something deeper is wreaking havoc across the land, a mercenary and utilitarian attitude that demonstrates little empathy for people’s actual well-being, that dismisses imagination and thought, branding passion for knowledge as irrelevant.
Azar Nafisi