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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...

There were many such instances, when expressions of sympathy could not be exchanged. What do you say to someone who is telling you about the rape and murder of virgins-I'm sorry, I feel your pain?

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

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...

. . . none of us are as sophisticated in these matters as you think. You know I always feel, with every new person, as if I am starting anew. These things are instinctive. What you need to learn is to...

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

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

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

It was one of the only times in my teaching career that I got angry and showed it in class. I was young and inexperienced, and I thought certain standards were respected and understood.

Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did. Soon the only people attending were those who never asked questions, and the sessions were discontinued...

This was Nassrin, or to be honest, this was the two of us together: sharing the most intimate moments with a shrug, pretending they were not intimate. It wasn't courage that motivated this casual,...

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...

In the Damascus airport she had been humiliated by what she was assumed to be, and when she returned home, she felt angry because of what she could have been.

Empathy is Gasby's heart, like many other novels. There is nothing more reproven than being blind in the face of the problems and pains of others.

After the revolution, almost all the activities one associated with being out in public-seeing movies, listening to music, sharing drinks or a meal with friends-shifted to private homes. It was...

She looked not so much composed as drawn inward. She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and vulnerable at the same time.

The smoke from her cigarette passed beneath the nostrils of the brown and white girls, and their space-annihilating concupiscence seemed centered on mentholated smoke along.

The statue was of a nude woman playing a slide trombone. It was entitles, enigmatically, Evelyn and Her Magic Violin.

Whatever we've said, friends, we're saying still-- such as it was, such as it is, such as it will be

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization.

...these sleepless nights, when oddly enough my concentration was high, fueled perhaps by the effort to ignore the all-engrossing threat of bombs and rockets.

The white cat symbolizes the silvery moon prying into corners and cleansing the sky for the day to follow. The white cat is the cleaner or the animal that cleans itself, described by the Sanskrit word...

May 4, 1985. I am packing for a short trip to New York to discuss the cat book with Brion. In the front room where the kittens are kept, Calico Jane is nursing one black kitten. I pick up my...

The complaint is the common human language

First they would stagger, then grow competent, and then forget the difficulty altogether while thinking of other things, and that was survival.

Rented a tent, a tent, a tent; Rented a tent, a tent, a tent. Rented a tent! Rented a tent! Rented a, rented a tent.

I turned on the flashlight; it cut a small circle of light from the darkness around me.

Some within the government and some former revolutionaries had finally realized that there was no way the Islamic regime could make us intellectuals vanish. In forcing us underground, it had also made...

The first thing Harvath removed was a sand-colored, modified Palafox 9mm SIG Sauer P226 pistol. It had bright green TRUGLO Tritium/Fiber-Optic Day/Night sights that allowed for fast target acquisition...

Both Yassi and I know that we have been losing our faith. We have been questioning it with every move. During the Shah's time, it was different. I felt I was in the minority and I had to guard my...

After all, it takes two to create a relationship, and when you make half the population invisible, the other half suffers as well.

I have now become something of an expert in the ways of "decisive" men. They are not firm, they just seem to be. Because they have a formula for everything, which they forcibly impose, they seem...

These characters depend to such a high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a movement...