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1ef364c
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You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again.
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Azar Nafisi |
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a0fbc13
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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.
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reading
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Azar Nafisi |
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c4bfc10
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You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.
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individuality
reading
morality
learning
life
self-righteousness
issues
sensitivity
novels
society
insight
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Azar Nafisi |
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884bffa
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Memories 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.
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Azar Nafisi |
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f59d3e4
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It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.
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Azar Nafisi |
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71da970
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I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you. In one way or another we articulate what has happened to us through the kind of people we become.
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silence
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Azar Nafisi |
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813c17e
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None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.
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evil
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Azar Nafisi |
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0014d93
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Empathy lies at the heart of , 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.
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Azar Nafisi |
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0ac6eef
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Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with someone you loathe.
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sex
iran
islamic-republic
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Azar Nafisi |
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4a5df95
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Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.
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Azar Nafisi |
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3a70fc1
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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 afternoon. Then suddenly, you feel a large drop on your right arm. Is it raining? You look up. The sky is still deceptively sunny...seconds later another drop. Then, with the sun still perched in the sky, you are drenched in a shower of rain. This is how memories invade me, abruptly and unexpectedly...
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Azar Nafisi |
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340503f
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Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies.
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Azar Nafisi |
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3f81175
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A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.
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Azar Nafisi |
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2c4cd5c
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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 from becoming too ruthless. Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed. But if you understand their different dimensions you cannot easily murder them. . .
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Azar Nafisi |
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5c6fcbf
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I told them this novel was an American classic, in many ways the quintessential American novel. There were other contenders: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Moby-Dick, The Scarlet Letter. Some cite its subject matter, the American Dream, to justify this distinction. We 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.
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Azar Nafisi |
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f69842e
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Art is as useful as bread.
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Azar Nafisi |
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e592989
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The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, participating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality.
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Azar Nafisi |
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8e12501
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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.
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Azar Nafisi |
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431ae4a
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I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.
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azar nafisi |
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242fba3
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The 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.
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Azar Nafisi |
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34b89ce
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The novels were an escape from reality in the sense that we could marvel at their beauty and perfection. Curiously, the novels we escaped into led us finally to question and prod our own realities, about which we felt so helplessly speechless.
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azar nafisi |
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883c849
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With fear come the lies and the justifications that, no matter how convincing, lower our self-esteem.
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Azar Nafisi |
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07cdbc3
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A novel is not an allegory, I said as the period was about to come to an end. 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.
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Azar Nafisi |
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2bc6fff
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Once 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.
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fiction
imagination
love
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Azar Nafisi |
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0248b6a
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We 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.
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Azar Nafisi |
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fb33df8
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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 l..
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Azar Nafisi |
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49ad510
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You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place...like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again.
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sense-of-place
leaving-home
longing
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Azar Nafisi |
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547e275
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I'm a perfectly equipped failure.
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Azar Nafisi |
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c30426c
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I eat my heart out alone.
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Azar Nafisi |
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645299a
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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.
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Azar Nafisi |
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6fab6d5
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those who judge must take all aspects of an individual's personality into account.
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Azar Nafisi |
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2d8263c
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It's frightening to be free, to have to take responsibility for your decisions.
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Azar Nafisi |
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8108127
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She resented the fact that her veil, which to her was a symbol of scared relationship to god, had now become an instrument of power, turning the women who wore them into political signs and symbols.
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Azar Nafisi |
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1f17f1d
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The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in ones own home." Most 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 too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy..
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literature
morality
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azar Nafisi |
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351392c
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Poshlust, Nabokov explains, "is not only the obviously trashy but mainly the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive."
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azar nafisi |
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bfea0ab
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The more we die, the stronger we will become
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Azar Nafisi |
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d508a59
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Pragmatists are sometimes more prone to illusion than dreamers; when they fall for something, they fall hard, not knowing how to protect themselves, while we dreamers are more practiced in surviving the disillusionment that follows when we wake up from our dreams.
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dreams
pragmatism
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Azar Nafisi |
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ff2b00c
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It is also about loss, about the perishability of dreams once they are transformed into hard reality. It is the longing, its immateriality, that makes the dream pure. What we in Iran had in common with Fitzgerald was this dream that became our obsession and took over our reality, this terrible, beautiful dream, impossible in its actualization, for which any amount of violence might be justified or forgiven. This was what we had in common, ..
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Azar Nafisi |
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6982c30
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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 now the family room and your beloved bookcases have been replaced by a brand-new television set . This is your house,a..
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Azar Nafisi |
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6f7d11d
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Other people's sorrows and joys have a way of reminding us of our own; we partly empathize with them because we ask ourselves: What about me? What does that say about my life, my pains, my anguish?
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pain
sorrow
joy
empathy
life
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Azar Nafisi |
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2c88e56
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i could have told him to learn from Gatsby. from the lonely, isolated Gatsby, who also tried to retrieve his past and give flash and blood to a fancy, a dream that was never meant to be more than a dream.
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Azar Nafisi |
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e343e6a
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Those who are close to us, when they die, divide our world. There is the world of the living, which we finally, in one way or another, succumb to, and then there is the domain of the dead that, like an imaginary friend (or foe) or a secret concubine, constantly beckons, reminding us of our loss. What is memory but a ghost that lurks at the corners of the mind, interrupting our normal course of life, disrupting our sleep in order to remind u..
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mother-daughter-relationship
father-daughter-relationship
iran
iranian-revolution
memoir
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Azar Nafisi |
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b691ab7
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yshj`wnn `l~ Zhr msh`r Hbn llmm b'qS~ 'shkl lt`byr mGl@, bynm yHrWmwn `lyn 'n nZhr 'y t`byr `lny `n msh`rn lshkhSy@, w'`ny lHb bshkl khS
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Azar Nafisi |
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a29741f
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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 publicly shaping and expressing private worlds, dreams, thoughts and desires, of constantly having access ..
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Azar Nafisi |