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094714d
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under 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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Azar Nafisi |
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cb40671
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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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c837676
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It is not just bookstores and libraries that are disappearing but museums, theaters, performing arts centers, art and music schools-- all those places where I felt at home have joined the list of endangered species. The San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and my own hometown paper, The Washington Post, have all closed their weekend book review sections, leaving books orphaned and stranded, poor cousins to televi..
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reading
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Azar Nafisi |
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c3cb60f
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The desperate truth of Lolita's story is not the rape of a twelve-year-old by a dirty old man but the confiscation of one individual's life by another.
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Azar Nafisi |
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8eaee50
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Most people have a way of radiating their potential - not just what they are, but what they could become.
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Azar Nafisi |
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9acd5f5
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Then there is the butterfly-or is it a moth? Humbert's inability to differentiate between the two,his indifference, implies a moral carelessness. This blind indifference echoes his callous attitude towards Lolita's nightly sobs. Those who tell us Lolita is a little vixen who deserved what she got should remember her nightly sobs in the arms of her rapist and jailer, because you see, as Humbert reminds us with a mixture of relish and pathos,..
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Azar Nafisi |
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c73daa7
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Most serious confrontations in life are not political, they are existential. One can agree with someone's political stance but disagree in a fundamental way with how they came to that position. It is a question of attitude, of moral configuration. My husband and I had plenty of grievances, but it all boiled down to a fundamental difference in the way we perceived life, the context within which we defined ourselves and our world. For that, t..
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politics
divorce
perspective-on-life
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Azar Nafisi |
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a553513
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How could God be so cruel as to create a Muslim woman with so much flesh and so little sex appeal?
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Azar Nafisi |
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c98b8d9
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Education's goal is to impart knowledge, and knowledge is not only heretical, but unpredictable and often uncomfortable.
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Azar Nafisi |
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653fdbc
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the world is full of angry, pathological individuals pushing pieces of paper with obscene messages under doors.
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Azar Nafisi |
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a596b5e
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A] great novel will allow you to transcend the social, racial and political limitations imposed by the vicissitudes of life and to find a deep fraternity based on empathy.
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great-novels
fraternity
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Azar Nafisi |
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2ef92c9
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It is obvious that she is more interested in happiness than in the institution of marriage, in love and understanding than matrimony.
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Azar Nafisi |
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1cb1db2
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Fiction was not a panacea, but it did offer us a critical way of appraising and grasping the world--not just our world but that other world that had become the object of our desires.
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Azar Nafisi |
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642dff3
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Life in the Islamic Republic was as capricious as the month of April, when short periods of sunshine will suddenly give way to showers and storms.
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Azar Nafisi |
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9496bc1
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Est-ce que nous considerons que tout est acceptable, que nous n'avons aucune responsabilite envers les autres, que seule compte la satisfaction de nos besoin?
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Azar Nafisi |
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8640576
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Quel giorno avevo una sensazione struggente, come di un lutto anticipato. Cio che avevo di piu caro era stato schiacciato come un prato di fiori di campo, raso al suolo per fare posto a un giardino ben curato. Neppure quando studiavo negli Stati Uniti avevo mai provato nulla del genere. In tutti quegli anni mi ero tenuta saldamente aggrappata alla certezza che la mia casa, il mio paese mi appartanevano, e potevo tornarci ogni volta che vole..
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Azar Nafisi |
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f15738b
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Adesso che non potevo piu pensare a me come a un'insegnante, una scrittrice, che non potevo piu indossare quello che volevo, ne camminare per strada al mio passo, gridare se mi andava di farlo o dare una pacca sulla spalla a un collega maschio, adesso che tutto cio era diventato illegale, mi sentivo evanescente, artificiale, un personaggio immaginario scaturito dalla matita di un disegnatore che una gomma qualsiasi sarebbe bastata a cancell..
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Azar Nafisi |
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6d66339
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Chi sa ballare alla persiana?" domando. Tutte si voltano a guardare Sanaz. Lei si schermisce, fa di no con la tessta. Cominciamo ad insistere, a incoraggiarla, formiamo un cerchio intorno a lei. Quando inizia a ballare, piuttosto a disagio, battiamo le mani e ci mettiamo a canticchiare. Nassrin ci chiede di fare piu piano. Sanaz riprende, quasi vergognandosi, a piccoli passi, muovendo il bacino con grazia sensuale. Continuiamo a ridere e a ..
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Azar Nafisi |
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328b5ab
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Dicono che il privato e politico; non e vero, naturalmente. Anzi, al centro della lotta per i diritti politici c'e proprio il desiderio di proteggere noi stessi, di impedire al politico di intromettersi nella vita privata. Pubblico e privato sono legati da un rapporto di interdipendenza, ma cio non significa che siano la stessa cosa. Il regno dell'immaginazione e come un ponte che li modifica di continuo l'uno rispetto all'altro. Il re filo..
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Azar Nafisi |
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7c19a2b
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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 all had in common was their subversiveness.
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Azar Nafisi |
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81fa69b
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Could one really concentrate on one's job when what preoccupied the faculty was how to excise the word wine from a Hemingway story, when they decided not to teach Bronte because she appeared to condone adultery?
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Azar Nafisi |
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b36b010
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It is because these characters depend to such a high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a movement inward that makes them whole.
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Azar Nafisi |
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c0caec7
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The facts in this story are true insofar as any memory is ever truthful, but I have made every effort to protect friends and students, baptizing them with new names and disguising them perhaps even from themselves, changing and interchanging facets of their lives so that their secrets are safe.
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Azar Nafisi |
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c9d60b0
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The fact is I don't know what I want, and I don't know if I am doing the right thing. I've always been told what is right--and suddenly I don't know anymore. I know what I don't want, but I don't know what I want,' she said, looking down at the ice cream she had hardly touched.
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Azar Nafisi |
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03a0026
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My toe as a lethal weapon!
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Azar Nafisi |
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ee132a2
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When I left class that day, I did not tell them what I myself was just beginning to discover: how similar our own fate was becoming to Gatsby's. He wanted to fulfill his dream by repeating the past, and in the end he discovered that the past was dead, the present a sham, and there was no future. Was this not similar to our revolution, which had come in the name of our collective past and had wrecked our lives in the name of dream?
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iranian-revolution
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Azar Nafisi |
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10a7215
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Shouldn't he want to know about something that has happened to his mother, that will happen to his wife, his sisters, his daughter and, I went on morosely, if ever he has an affair, even to his mistress?
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Azar Nafisi |
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0e5cd7d
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She is a tyrant much in the way of a bad novelist, who shapes his characters according to his own ideology or desires and never allows them the space to become themselves.
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Azar Nafisi |
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562661b
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These are people who consciously choose failure in order to preserve their own sense of integrity. They are more elitist than mere snobs, because of their high standards.
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Azar Nafisi |
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7b757bd
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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.
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Azar Nafisi |
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611547d
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Teaching is a funny business; you want to share these glimpses of something real and profound, but half the time students want only to know their next assignment and what they will need to study for the test.
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Azar Nafisi |
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3f6d56f
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Well, it's like this: if you're forced into having sex with someone you dislike, you make your mind blank--you pretend to be somewhere else, you tend to forget your body, you hate your body. That's what we do here. We are constantly pretending to be somewhere else--we either plan it or dream it.
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Azar Nafisi |
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6d05629
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It is said that the personal is political. That is not true, of course. At the core of the fight for political rights is the desire to protect ourselves, to prevent the political from intruding on our individual lives. Personal and political are interdependent but not one and the same thing. The realm of imagination is a bridge between them, constantly refashioning one in terms of the other. Plato's philosopher-king knew this and so did the..
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Azar Nafisi |
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6da44f4
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Einstein was articulate and well-read, a lover of classical music, and it was he who said, "I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world"
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Azar Nafisi |
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53c9ed6
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Switzerland had somehow become a bywordfor Western laxity: any program or action that was deemed un- Islamic was reproached with a mocking reminder that Iran was by no means Switzerland.
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Azar Nafisi |
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f115314
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Did you ever dream this could happen to us? He said, No I didn't, but I should have. After we all helped create this mess, we were not doomed to have the Islamic Republic. And in a sense, he was right.
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Azar Nafisi |
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2485313
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Is it possible to write a reverent novel," said Nassrin, "and to have it be good? Besides, the contract with the reader is that this is not reality, it's an invented world. There must be some blasted space in life," she added crossly, "where we can be offensive, for God's sake."
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Azar Nafisi |
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a0d3d83
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There were no public articulations of these humiliations, so we took refuge in accidental occasions to weave our resentments and hatreds into little stories that lost their impact as soon as they were told.
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humiliation
resentment
stories
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Azar Nafisi |
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4474cfb
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I blame my generation for having neglected to teach our children that in life there are no safe places, that safety is an illusion. "Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark," Baldwin said in an interview in 1961."
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Azar Nafisi |
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74c87a9
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Love is love, but there are so many ways of articulating it.
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Azar Nafisi |
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8207d1d
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Again she repeated that she would never get married, never ever. She said that for her a man always existed in books, that she would spend the rest of her life with Mr. Darcy--even in the books, there were few men for her.
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Azar Nafisi |
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76be161
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We must thank the Islamic Republic for making us rediscover and even covet all these things we took for granted: one could write a paper on the pleasure of eating a ham sandwich. And I said, Oh, the things we have to be thankful for! And that memorable day was the beginning of our detailing our long list of debts to the Islamic Republic: parties, eating ice cream in public, falling in love, holding hands, wearing lipstick, laughing in publi..
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Azar Nafisi |
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f30c20f
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Those of us living in the Islamic Republic of Iran grasped both the tragedy and absurdity of the cruelty to which we were subjected. We had to poke fun at our own misery in order to survive. We also instinctively recognized poshlust-not just in others, but in ourselves. This was one reason that art and literature became so essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity. What Nabokov captured was the texture of life in a tota..
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Azar Nafisi |
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837a4f3
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The insistence in Darcy's voice is a symptom of his passion for Elizabeth; it emerges even in their most mundane interactions. We can trace the development of Darcy's feelings for Elizabeth in the tone of his voice. This reaches its climax in the scene in which he proposes to her. His negative persistence, beginning his speech with 'In vain have I struggled. It will not do,' becomes almost violent, in part because the novel itself is so res..
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restraint
pride-and-prejudice
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Azar Nafisi |