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Book: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Quotes of Book: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A
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  1. Azar Nafisi _ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A

    Reading a novel is not an exercise in censure.
    book-quote

  2. Azar Nafisi _ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A

    When the girls left that afternoon, they left behind the aura of their unsolved problems and dilemmas. I felt exhausted, I chose the only way I knew to cope with problems. I went to the refrigerator, scooped up the coffee ice cream. Poured some cold coffee over it, looked for walnuts, discovered we had none left, went after almonds, crushed them with my teeth and sprinkled them over my concoction.
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  3. Azar Nafisi _ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A

    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 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…
    book-quoteliterature

  4. Azar Nafisi _ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A

    Don't go chasing after the grand theme, the idea, I told my students, as if it is separate from the story itself. The idea or ideas behind the story must come to you through the experience of the novel and not as something tacked onto it.
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  5. Azar Nafisi _ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A

    The Islamic Revolution, as it turned out, did more damage to Islam by using it as an instrument of oppression than any alien ever could have done.
    book-quoteoppression

  6. Azar Nafisi _ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A

    We were all victims of the arbitrary nature of a totalitarian regime that constantly intruded into the most private corners of our lives and imposed its relentless fictions on us. Was this rule the rule of Islam? What memories were we creating for our children? This constant assault, this persistent lack of kindness, was what frightened me most.
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  7. Azar Nafisi _ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A

    The only way to leave the circle, to stop dancing with the jailer, is to find a way to preserve one's individuality, that unique quality which evades description but differentiates one human being from the other.
    book-quotetotalitarianismwomen-writers

  8. Azar Nafisi _ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A

    Sempre mantive o hábito prazeroso dos tempos de faculdade, de sublinhar passagens e fazer anotações. Grande parte de minhas notas de Orgulho e Preconceito, A herdeira, O morro dos ventos uivantes, Madame Bovary e Tom Jones foi feita durante as noites de insônia. 224
    book-quote

  9. Azar Nafisi _ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A

    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. What was wrong with that?
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  10. Azar Nafisi _ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A

    Experience had proven that the only way these regulations would be heeded was if they were implemented by force.
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  11. Azar Nafisi _ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A

    We lived in a culture that denied any merit to literary works, considering them important only when they were handmaidens to something seemingly more urgent-namely ideology. This was a country where all gestures, even the most private, were interpreted in political terms. The colors of my head scarf or my father's tie were symbols of Western decadence and imperialist tendencies. Not wearing a beard, shaking hands with members of the opposite sex, clapping or whistling in public meetings, were likewise considered Western and therefore decadent, part of the plot by imperialists to bring down our culture.
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  12. Azar Nafisi _ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A

    Putting the pastries onto a large tray, I asked Manna if she envisioned the words to her poems in colors. Nabokov writes in his autobiography that he and his mother saw the letters of the alphabet in color, I explained. He says of himself that he is a painterly writer.The Islamic Republic coarsened my taste in colors, Manna said, fingering the discarded leaves of her roses. I want to wear outrageous colors, like shocking pink or tomato red. I feel too greedy for colors to see them in carefully chosen words of poetry.
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