Lots of times you can feel as an exile in a country that you were born in. — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
Thus the regime has deprived Iranian women not just of their present rights, but also of their history and their past. — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
“It was one of the only times in my teaching career that I got angry and showed it in class. I was… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
i could have told him to learn from Gatsby. from the lonely, isolated Gatsby, who also tried to retrieve his past and… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
The stories from Iran's present and past are reminders that freedom, democracy and human rights, or fundamentalism, fascism and terrorism are not… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
We in ancient countries have our past- we obsess over the past. They, the Americans, have a dream: they feel nostalgia about… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
“This nation is very strange. It watches tyranny in silence and in time it proves its own will—the fact of its existence—through… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
I believe in empathy. I believe in the kind of empathy that is created through imagination and through intimate, personal relationships. I… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
“It is also about loss, about the perishability of dreams once they are transformed into hard reality. It is the longing, its… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
“A novel is not an allegory...it is a sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
“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 Copy Share
“Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power--the ones who had taken it away--become afraid,… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
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… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order to survive, to protect… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
“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,… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
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… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
“That first day I asked my students what they thought fiction should accomplish, why one should bother to read fiction at all. It was… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
“you cannot just be stubborn against something, you need to be stubborn for something as well” — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
Visa for Avalon is a testament to the power of fiction. It illuminates the truth at the heart of what is commonly called reality.… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
“You ask me what it means to be irrelevant? The feeling is akin to visiting your old house as a wandering ghost with unfinished… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
“I explained that most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
“We envy people like you, and we want to be you; we can't, so we destroy you.” — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
