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In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This

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.

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,...

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...

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...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Muslim man, regardless of his fortune, must be in want of a nine-year-old virgin wife.' So declared Yassi in that special tone of hers, deadpan and mildly...

Reading a novel is not an exercise in censure.

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...

And even with the book closed, the voices do not stop--there are echoes and reverberations that seem to leap off the pages and mischievously leave the novel tingling in our ears.

Ourworld in that living room with its window framing my beloved Elburz Mountains became oursanctuary, our self-contained universe, mocking the reality of black-scarved, timid faces in the citythat...

you cannot just be stubborn against something, you need to be sib born for something as well

I've always kept the pleasurable habit of college times, stressing tickets and notes. Much of my notes of pride and prejudice, the heiress, the hill of the howling winds, Madame Bovary and Tom Jones...

One of those mid -season twilights, when for a moment the air seems to condense in the summer and autumn.

Had I been able to formulate my first impressions of the United States, I might have said that there was a place in America called Kansas, where people could find a magic land at the heart of a...

Later, Nima told us that the son of one of his friends, a ten-year-old, had awakened his parents in horror telling them he had been having an "illegal dream." He had been dreaming that he was at the...

Between my first book tour, in 2003, and the next one, in 2009, many of the places I visited had undergone a significant transformation or vanished: Cody's in Berkeley, seven branch libraries in...

Whoever we were-and it was not really important what religion we belonged to, whether we wished to wear the veil or not, whether we observed certain religious norms or not-we had become the figment of...

Razieh had an amazing capacity for beauty. She said, You know, all my life I have lived inpoverty. I had to steal books and sneak into movie houses-but, God, I loved those books! I don't think any...

You see this is a chair, but when you come to describe it, you do so from where you are positioned, and from your own perspective, and so you cannot say there is only one way of seeing a chair, can...

These people," he had said with his inscrutable smile, "are different from us. They don't care about books and such things.

This is the old part of Tehran, with small spice shops, dusty narrow alleys with dry streams winding into houses with tall protective walls.

A great novel hears your perceptions, makes you feel the complexity of life and individuals, and defends you from the hypocritical certainty of the validity of your opinions, in morality to watertight...

{T}he most difficult part of the fight is not taking aim at the enemy, but rejecting his definition of you.

He has demonstrated his own weakness: an inability to read a novel on its own terms. All he knows is judgment

I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust

Experience had proven that the only way these regulations would be heeded was if they were implemented by force.

Well, maybe it's true, Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions to make it seem long. But in that event, who wants...

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...

We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.

Take any emotion-love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions-if you don't allow yourself to go all the...

And so began the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran versus The Great Gatsby

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.

He is more rooted to the idea of home. He created this home...and established routines like watching the BBC and cooking barbecues for friends. It's much harder to dismantle that world and to rebuild...