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For more than 30 years the Islamic regime and its apologists have tried to dismiss women's struggle in Iran as part of a western ploy.

Azar Nafisi

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Azar Nafisi
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: December 1
Faculty Member
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Professor
Public Figure
Writer
Teheran
Iran
Western
Tried
Apologists
Struggle
Ploy
Part
Dismiss
Women
Regime
Years
Regimes
Islamic

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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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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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Unfortunately for governments like that of Iran, when they forbid something, people become more interested.
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The more we die, the stronger we will become
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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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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?
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Lots of times you can feel as an exile in a country that you were born in.
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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.
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It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.
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When I was teaching at the University of Tehran we were struggling against the implementation of the revolution rules.
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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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The best work of literature to represent the American Dream is 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It shows us how dreaming can be tainted by reality, and that if you don't compromise, you may suffer.
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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.
Azar Nafisi
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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.
Azar Nafisi
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I think Islam is in a sense, in crisis. It needs to question and re-question itself.
Azar Nafisi
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Poor reading, like poor writing, is imposing what you already know on texts. You should go into reading to discover, not to reaffirm what you know.
Azar Nafisi
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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.
Azar Nafisi
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I see people who talk about America, and then undermine it by not paying attention to its soul, to its poetry. I see polarization, reductionism and superficiality.
Azar Nafisi
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That, of course, is what great works of imagination do for us: They make us a little restless, destabilize us, question our preconceived notions and formulas.
Azar Nafisi
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When I walked down the streets, I asked myself, are these my people?, is this my hometown, am I who I am?
Azar Nafisi