Azar Nafisi Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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 culturally determined, but universal.

  Azar Nafisi

  Past, Rights, Iran

  "Iran’s Women: Canaries in the Coal Mine" by Azar Nafisi, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 9, 2010.

  16 Copy quote

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

  Azar Nafisi

  Dream, Reality, Color

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.11, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.

  Azar Nafisi

  Pay, Crime, Settling

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.119, Random House

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• This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry?

  Azar Nafisi

  Girl, Religious, Islamic

  "Iran’s Women: Canaries in the Coal Mine" by Azar Nafisi, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 9, 2010.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Rights, Imagination, Bills

  Azar Nafisi (2015). “Reading Lolita in Tehran”, p.337, Penguin UK

  4 Copy quote

• My passion has always been books and literature, and teaching.

  Azar Nafisi

  Book, Teaching, Passion

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• I believe that it is only through empathy, that the pain experienced by an Algerian woman, a North Korean dissident, a Rwandan child or an Iraqi prisoner, becomes real to me and not just passing news. And it is at times like this when I ask myself, am I prepared - like Huck Finn - to give up Sunday school heaven for the kind of hell that Huck chose?

  Azar Nafisi

  Children, Giving Up, Pain

  4 Copy quote

• When I first left Iran at the age of 13, Iran had become such a shining star - it was the point to which all my desires and dreams returned.

  Azar Nafisi

  Dream, Stars, Iran

  7 Copy quote

• There is little consolation in the fact that millions of people are unhappier than we are. Why should other people's misery make us happier or more content?

  Azar Nafisi

  People, Littles, Facts

  4 Copy quote

• Khatami is a symptom and not the cause of change in Iran.

  Azar Nafisi

  Iran, Causes, Symptoms

  "Mutually Assured Misunderstanding". Interview with Wen Stephenson, www.pbs.org. April 23, 2002 - May 2, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

• If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order to survive, to protect some aspect of myself that was now in constant retreat.

  Azar Nafisi

  Book, Order, Sanctuary

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.170, Random House

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• We speak of facts, yet facts exist only partially to us if they are not repeated and re-created through emotions, thoughts and feelings. To me it seemed as if we had not really existed, or only half existed, because we could not imaginatively realize ourselves and communicate to the world, because we had used works of imagination to serve as handmaidens to some political ploy.

  Azar Nafisi

  Imagination, Political, Feelings

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.339, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• Do 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 Nafisi

  Real, Trying, Fiction

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.3, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• Visa for Avalon is a testament to the power of fiction. It illuminates the truth at the heart of what is commonly called reality. This account of lives transformed and ruined by the triumph of a totalitarian rule is a timely reminder of how moral and intellectual laziness and apathy can pave the road to the reign of terror brought on by such a system.

  Azar Nafisi

  Heart, Reality, Intellectual

  4 Copy quote

• What 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 Nafisi

  Queens, Historical, Looks

  4 Copy quote

• I'm a perfectly equipped failure.

  Azar Nafisi

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.201, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• A bad author can take the most moral issue and make you want to just never, ever think about that moral issue.

  Azar Nafisi

  Thinking, Issues, Want

  4 Copy quote

• America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry?

  Azar Nafisi

  America, Poetic License, Vision

  6 Copy quote

• I 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 Nafisi

  Islamic, Iran, Years

  4 Copy quote

• Art is no longer snobbish or cowardly. It teaches peasants to use tractors, gives lyrics to young soldiers, designs textiles for factory women's dresses, writes burlesque for factory theatres, does a hundred other useful tasks. Art is as usueful as bread.

  Azar Nafisi

  Art, Writing, Giving

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• In 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 Nafisi

  Art, Betrayal, Lying

  9 Copy quote

• A 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 Nafisi

  Pain, Lying, Heart

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.132, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Azar Nafisi

  Islamic, Past, Years

  "Iran’s Women: Canaries in the Coal Mine" by Azar Nafisi, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 9, 2010.

  9 Copy quote

• I would like to say how much I resent people who say of the Islamic Republic that this is our culture - as if women like to be stoned to death, or as if they like to be married at the age of nine.

  Azar Nafisi

  Islamic, People, Age

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• Basically, fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. In the same way that Hitler evoked a mythological religion of German purity and the glory of the past, the Islamists use religion to evoke emotions and passions in people who have been oppressed for a long time in order to reach their purpose.

  Azar Nafisi

  Passion, Past, Order

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