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3f46b92
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One of the most wonderful things about Pride and Prejudice is the variety of voices it embodies. There are so many different forms of dialogue: between several people, between two people, internal dialogue and dialogue through letters. All tensions are created and resolved through dialogue. Austen's ability to create such multivocality, such diverse voices and intonations in relation and in confrontation within a cohesive structure, is one ..
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tensions
opposition
plurality
tolerance
diversity
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bbece91
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I wish wish I could steal the intricacies of language. But give my kids a break--remember, most of them were fed on Steinbeck's The Pearl.
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2125583
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hdh m t`nyh ly Thrn Hqan : fGybh ybdw 'kthr Hqyq@ w`mqan mn HDwrh
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02e6360
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'yh lqry Htj mnk l~ n ttkhyln f`lan l'nn ln nZhr dh lm tf`l
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89f2451
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These students of mine, like the rest of their generation, were different from mine in one fundamental aspect. My generation complained of a loss, the void in our lives that was created when our past was stolen from us, making us exile in our own country. Yet we had a past to compare with the present; we had memories and images of what had been taken away. But my girls spoke constantly of stolen kisses, films they had never seen and the win..
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5534977
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It wasn't courage that motivated this casual, impersonal manner of treating so much pain; it was a special brand of cowardice...forcing others to listen to the most horrendous experiences and yet denying them the moment of empathy: don't feel sorry for me....This is nothing, nothing really.
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01c596b
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fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.
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a48b487
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I always had a hankering for the security of impossible dreams.
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ca4beae
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Is it possible to write a reverent novel," said Nassrin, "and to have it be good?..."
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1ab0b07
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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 else's shoes and understand the other's different and contradictory sid..
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23bc989
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In his forward to the English edition of Invitation to a Beheading (1959), Nabokov reminds the reader that his novel does not offer 'tout pour tous.' Nothing of the kind. 'It is,' he claims, 'a violin in the void.' [...] There was something, both in his fiction and in his life, that we instinctively related to and grasped, the possibility of a boundless freedom when all options are taken away. I think that is what drove me to create the cl..
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153c085
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In fiction, every treachery and setback appears to serve some end: the characters learn and grow and come into their own. In life, it is not always clear that the hijacking of our plans is quite so provident or benign.
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c98df98
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How do you tell someone she has to learn to love herself and her own body before she can be loved or love?
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fe57fc2
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incapacity for true dialogue implies an incapacity for tolerance, self-reflection and empathy.
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a8a9b87
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Nabokov calls every great novel a fairy tale, I said. Well, I would agree. First, let me remind you that fairy tales abound with frightening witches who eat children and wicked stepmothers who poison their beautiful stepdaughters and weak fathers who leave their children behind in forests. But the magic comes from the power of good, that force which tells us we need not give in to the limitations and restrictions imposed on us by McFate, as..
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literature
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bf5baf7
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When the founding fathers conceived of this new nation, they understood that the education of its citizens would be essential to the health of their democratic enterprise. Knowledge was not just a luxury; it was essential.
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reading
education
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3f875b0
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The most important result of the encounter [in the preceding anecdote] is the scholar's startling discovery of the roundness of the earth . . . Instinctively realizing the connection between the foreigner's presence, the roundness of the earth, and future changes and upheavals, he finally announces, "Yes, the earth is round, the women will start to think, and as soon as they begin to think, they will become shameless."
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5d026ba
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My impulse now, as then, is to disagree. The majority of people in this country who haunt bookstores, go to readings and book festivals or simply read in the privacy of their homes are not traumatized exiles.
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ddfae1b
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She had not learned from reading it that adultery was good or that we should all become shysters. Did people all go on strike or head west after reading Steinbeck? Did they go whaling after reading Melville? Are people not a little more complex than that?
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e83628e
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There is seldom a physical description of a character or scene in and yet we feel that we have seen each of these characters and their intimate worlds; we feel we know them, and sense their surroundings. We can see Elizabeth's reaction to Darcy's denunciation of her beauty, Mrs. Bennet chattering at the dinner table or Elizabeth and Darcy walking in and out of the shadows of the Pemberley estate. The amazing thing is that all of this is c..
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80678ea
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I went on and on, and as I continued, I became more righteous in my indignation. It was the sort of anger one gets high on, the kind one takes home to show off to family and friends.
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indignation
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db3d27a
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But perhaps there is another, more personal reason for my disagreement with Ramin: I cannot imagine myself feeling at home in a place that is indifferent to what has become my true home, a land with no borders and few restrictions, which I have taken to calling "the Republic of Imagination." I think of it as Nabokov's "somehow, somewhere" or Alice's backyard, a world that runs parallel to the real one, whose occupants need no passport or do..
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reading
inspiration
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c31dada
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This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing.
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78da3f5
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We were unhappy. We compared our situation to our own potentials, to what we could have had, and somehow there was little consolation in the fact that millions of people were unhappier than we were. Why should other people's misery make us happier or more content?
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b6060e0
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At that time, she had worn the scarf as a testament to her faith. Her decision was a voluntary act. When the revolution forced the scarf on others, her action became meaningless.
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ce00136
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There are so many different forms of silence: the silence that tyrannical states force on their citizens, stealing their memories, rewriting their histories, and imposing on them a state-sanctioned identity. Or the silence of witnesses who choose to ignore or not speak the truth, and of victims who at times become complicit in the crimes committed against them. Then there are the silences we indulge in about ourselves, our personal mytholog..
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silence
tyranny
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a2a462c
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nh mn lmkhyf Hqan 'n yHs lnsn blHry@, w'n ykwn msw'wlan `n qrrth!
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b0d76e3
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One can believe James's claim to an "imagination of disaster"; so many of his protagonists are unhappy in the end, and yet he gives them an aura of victory. It is because these characters depend on such 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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36f71b3
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Dreams,Mr.Nazari,are perfect ideals,complete in themselves.
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926f1a0
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Many things change with time, but certain basic human traits remain eternal: curiosity and empathy, the urge to know and the urge to connect.
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bf89f74
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readers were born free and ought to remain free."
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0590a5f
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The way we view fiction is a reflection of how we define ourselves as a nation. Works of the imagination are canaries in the coal mine, the measure by which we can evaluate the health of the rest of society.
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7f35627
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Un roman, n'est pas une allegorie, ai-je conclu. C'est l'experience, a travers nos propres sens, d'un autre monde. Si vous n'entrez pas dans ce monde, si vous ne retenez pas votre souffle en meme temps que les personnages qui le peuplent, si vous ne vous impliquez pas dans ce qui va leur arriver, vous ne connaitrez pas l'empathie, et l'empathie est au coeur du roman. Voila comment il faut lire la fiction, en inhalant l'experience qu'elle vo..
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05a843a
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Against the onslaught of consumerism, against all the overwhelming siren voices that beckon, our only weapon is to exercise our right to choose. And to make the right choices, we need to be able to think, to reflect, to pause, to imagine, because what is being sold to you is not just toothpaste or deodorant or a bathroom fixture, but your next president or representative, your children's future, your way and view of life.
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7409f46
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Imagination and the journey-quest is at the heart of every life well-lived
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6e12a5b
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The price one pays when choosing exile is the loss of all that defines you as an individual. The only thing that makes this immense loss tolerable is the discovery of a self you did not know existed - of a true independence. That is the real gift of America, not its fabled wealth and prosperity.
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self-discovery
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33923f0
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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. My students witnessed it in show trials on television and enacted it every time they went out into the streets dressed as they were told to dress. They had not become part of the crowd who watched..
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5eacaae
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It is amazing how everything can fall into a routine
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02a1d4c
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Imagination in these works is equated with empathy; we can't experience all that others have gone through, but we can understand even the most monstrous individuals in works of fiction. 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 ..
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novels
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d6c946a
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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. I just want you to remember this. That is all; class dismissed.
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3f5953d
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We were thirsty for some form of beauty, even in an incomprehensible, overintellectual, abstract film with no subtitles and censored out of recognition. There was a sense of wonder at being in a public place for the first time in years without fear or anger, being in a place with a crowd of strangers that was not a demonstration, a protest rally, a breadline or a public execution...For a brief time we experienced collectively the kind of aw..
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collective
beauty
censorship
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f2baafe
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Don't let strangers touch you." And yet it is seldom strangers, I learned long before I was a teenager, who do you harm. It is always the ones closest to us: the suave chauffeur, the skilled photographer, the kind music teacher, the good friend's sober and dignified husband, the pious man of God. They are the ones your parents trust, whom they don't want to believe anything against."
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trust
strangers
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d0e0d84
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The truth is that James, like many other great writers and artists, had chosen his own loyalties and nationality. His true country, his home, was that of the imagination.
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imagination
nationality
writers
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bc02268
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Only Catherine has the capacity to change and mature, although here...our heroine pays a dear price for this change. And she does take a form of revenge on both her father and her suitor: she refuses to give in to them. In the end, she has her triumph.
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revenge
triumph
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