Quote by Azar Nafisi Download Open image ““This is Tehran for me: its absences were more real than its presences”” — Azar Nafisi ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 3.5 out of 5 (6 ratings) Copy quoteShare
If I hear, 'Be afraid of Tehran,' I'm like, 'I'd better go to Tehran.' — Henry Rollins Copy Share Image
“I loved that the Iranians never quite did what you thought they were going to do, or even, what you wanted them to do.… — Lois Pryce Copy Share Image
“I was ashamed to find myself contemplating that for the traveller, Iran’s charms lay in its isolation. This was not a mindset I liked,… — Lois Pryce Copy Share Image
“Tehran looked the way most of its remaining citizens must have felt: sad, forlorn, and defenseless, yet not without a certain dignity. The adhesive… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
“I searched modern fiction and poetry for clues to how we confronted and evaded reality, how we articulated our experience and turned to language… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
“I was a VIP, a Very Iranian Person, and things just take longer for us.” — Firoozeh Dumas Copy Share Image
I'm not sure that my films show the reality of life in Iran; we show different aspects of life. Iran is a very extensive… — Abbas Kiarostami 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 geographically and… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share Image
A fascinating, insightful, and new treatment from the perspective of an intimately involved former Iranian senior official on Iran's nuclear program and responses to… — Thomas R. Pickering Copy Share Image
“Better that anger should be directed into jihad abroad than into Iran-style revolution at home.” — Robert Lacey Copy Share Image
“If something went wrong out in the desolate mountains of Iran, that was the end. No one would be coming to rescue them. Their… — Stephen England 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 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 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. I have come to believe that genuine democracy cannot exist without the freedom to imagine and the right to use imaginative works without any restrictions. To have a whole life, one must have the possibility of… — 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 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, has learned that every individual has different dimensions to his personality… Those who judge must take all aspects of an individual's personality into account. It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone… — 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 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 an odd way to start, but I did succeed in getting their attention. I explained that we would in the course of the semester read and discuss many different authors, but that one thing these authors… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
“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 business. Imagine going back: the structure is familiar ,but the door is now metal instead of wood,the walls have been painted a garish pink ,the easy chair you loved so much is gone .Your office is… — Azar Nafisi Copy Share
