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.
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.
It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.
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.
None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.
Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with someone you loathe.
Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.
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.
Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies.
She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and vulnerable at the same time.
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.
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?
![[A] novel is not moral in the usual sense of the word. It can be called moral when it shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/azar-nafisi-6765.jpg)
[A] novel is not moral in the usual sense of the word. It can be called moral when it shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in.
Art is as useful as bread.
I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.
With fear come the lies and the justifications that, no matter how convincing, lower our self-esteem.
Those who judge must take all aspects of an individual's personality into account.
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.
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.
I eat my heart out alone.
I'm a perfectly equipped failure.
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.
The more we die, the stronger we will become
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.
It's frightening to be free, to have to take responsibility for your decisions.
The reason I am so popular is that I give others back what they need to find in themselves. You need me not because I tell you what I want you to do but because I articulate and justify what you want to do.
When I walked down the streets, I asked myself, are these my people?, is this my hometown, am I who I am?
We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.
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?
Poshlust, Nabokov explains, "is not only the obviously trashy but mainly the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive.
