Once evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual. How does the soul survive? is the essential question. And the response is: through love and imagination.
Azar Nafisi Reading Lolita in Tehran:...
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In "Reading Lolita in Tehran," Azar Nafisi discusses how once evil is perceived as a personal issue woven into daily existence, individual resistance emerges as a means to combat it. This shift emphasizes the importance of personal agency in facing oppressive realities, where one's actions become a form of rebellion against collective malevolence. The struggle against this individualized evil raises a profound question about the survival of the human spirit amid such adversity.

Nafisi suggests that the key to enduring these challenges lies in two powerful forces: love and imagination. Love fosters connection and compassion, countering the isolating effects of evil, while imagination provides the capacity to envision a different reality—a crucial aspect of resilience. Together, these elements form a lifeline for the soul, enabling individuals to retain hope and transcend the oppressive circumstances around them.

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Reading Lolita in Tehran:...
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Other quotes in Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Reading a novel is not an exercise in censure.
Azar Nafisi Reading Lolita in Tehran:...
Reading a novel is not an exercise in censure.
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.
Azar Nafisi Reading Lolita in Tehran:...
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.
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…
Azar Nafisi Reading Lolita in Tehran:...
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…
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.
Azar Nafisi Reading Lolita in Tehran:...
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.
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.
Azar Nafisi Reading Lolita in Tehran:...
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.
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.
Azar Nafisi Reading Lolita in Tehran:...
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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Other quotes in fiction

She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth.
Henry James What Maisie Knew
She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth.
Then the sun came up and shook the night chill out of the air the way you'd shake a rug.
John Steinbeck Cannery Row
Then the sun came up and shook the night chill out of the air the way you'd shake a rug.
Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures, or strives to endure.
Eudora Welty On Writing
Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures, or strives to endure.
Human life is fiction's only theme.
Eudora Welty On Writing
Human life is fiction's only theme.
Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction; in particular, the novel.
Eudora Welty On Writing
Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction; in particular, the novel.
Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.
Eudora Welty On Writing
Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.
More »

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