Azar Nafisi Quotes

42 Sourced Quotes

As I trace the route to his apartment, the twists and turns, and pass once more the old tree opposite his house, I am struck by a sudden thought: 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.

Azar Nafisi
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.

Azar Nafisi
I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.

Azar Nafisi
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.

Azar Nafisi
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
Do not, under any circumstances belittle a works 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.

Azar Nafisi
When I walked down the streets, I asked myself, are these my people?, is this my hometown, am I who I am?

Azar Nafisi
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.

Azar Nafisi
With fear come the lies and the justifications that, no matter how convincing, lower our self-esteem.

Azar Nafisi
Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with someone you loathe.

Azar Nafisi
None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.

Azar Nafisi
On the one hand, the ruling Islamic regime has succeeded in completely repressing Iranian women. Women are forbidden to go out in public unless they are covered by clothing that conceals everything but their hands and faces. At all government institutions, universities, and airports, there are separate entrances for women, where they are searched for lipstick and other weapons of mass destruction.... Yet, while these measures are meant to render women invisible and powerless, they are paradoxically making women tremendously visible and powerful.

Azar Nafisi