“I have a recurring fantasy that one more article has been added to the Bill of Rights: the right to free access… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
The crisis besetting America is not just an economic or political crisis; something deeper is wreaking havoc across the land, a mercenary… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
That, of course, is what great works of imagination do for us: They make us a little restless, destabilize us, question our… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
Only curiosity about the fate of others, the ability to put ourselves in their shoes, and the will to enter their world… — 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
Once evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual. How does the soul survive?… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
“The truth is that James, like many other great writers and artists, had chosen his own loyalties and nationality. His true country,… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
“We speak of facts, yet facts exist only partially to us if they are not repeated and re-created through emotions, thoughts and… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
I have a recurring fantasy that one more article has been added to the Bill of Rights: the right to free access… — 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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“you cannot just be stubborn against something, you need to be stubborn for something as well” — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
