Quotessence
Home / Authors / Azar Nafisi Books
Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi Books

Writer

Related Quotes

“«[...] frequentare me, sentirmi raccontare delle mie esperienze passate, rafforza quell'idea tutta positiva e assolutamente acritica dell'altro mondo, dell'Occidente... Non so... A volte ho paura di aver...» «Di averle aiutate a crearsi una fantasia parallela», intervenne lui «che si contrappone alla sovrastruttura inventata dalla Repubblica islamica?» «Sì, sì» annuii con foga. «Be', allora, in primo luogo non è solo colpa tua. Nessuno riuscirebbe a sopravvivere nel mondo che vogliono imporci loro: dobbiamo tutti inventarci un paradiso personale verso cui evadere. Nondimeno», concluse «qualcosa che puoi fare ci sarebbe». «Davvero?» domandai ansiosa, ancora un po' avvilita, e morendo dalla voglia di ricevere istruzioni, per una volta, anziché darne. «Sì, davvero, e anzi lo stai già facendo con questo tuo seminario, se non rovini tutto. Fa' ciò che i poeti fanno con i loro re filosofi. Non c'è bisogno di creare una fantasia parallela dell'Occidente: da' alle tue ragazze il meglio di quanto l'altro mondo può offrire: la finzione letteraria - restituisci loro l'immaginazione!» concluse trionfante [...]”

ReadingLiteratureImagination
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“There are so many different forms of silence: the silence that tyrannical states force on their citizens, stealing their memories, rewriting their histories, and imposing on them a state-sanctioned identity. Or the silence of witnesses who choose to ignore or not speak the truth, and of victims who at times become complicit in the crimes committed against them. Then there are the silences we indulge in about ourselves, our personal mythologies, the stories we impose upon our real lives.”

SilenceTyrannyRegimes
Book:Things I've Been Silent About
Create image

“Un romanzo non è un'allegoria” dissi verso la fine della lezione “È l'esperienza sensoriale di un altro mondo. Se non entrate in quel mondo, se non trattenete il respiro insieme ai personaggi, se non vi lasciate coinvolgere nel loro destino, non arriverete mai a indentificarvi con loro, non arriverete mai al cuore del libro. È così che si legge un romanzo: come se fosse qualcosa da inalare, da tenere nei polmoni. Dunque, cominciate a respirare. Ricordate solo questo. È tutto; potete andare.”

Art
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“. . . 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 lay aside your inhibitions, to go back to your childhood when you played marbles or whatever with boys and never thought anything of it.”

LoveRomanceFriendshipDatingCompanionship
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“One of the most wonderful things about Pride and Prejudice is the variety of voices it embodies. There are so many different forms of dialogue: between several people, between two people, internal dialogue and dialogue through letters. All tensions are created and resolved through dialogue. Austen's ability to create such multivocality, such diverse voices and intonations in relation and in confrontation within a cohesive structure, is one of the best examples of the democratic aspect of the novel. In Austen's novels, there are spaces for oppositions that do not need to eliminate each other in order to exist. There is also space - not just space but a necessity - for self-reflection and self-criticism. Such reflection is the cause of change. We needed no message, no outright call for plurality, to prove our point. All we needed was to reach and appreciate the cacophony of voices to understand its democratic imperative. There was where Austen's danger lay.”

DiversityToleranceDialogueOppositionPluralityTensions
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“L'insensibilità è tipica anche dei personaggi negativi di Jane Austen: Lady Catherine, Mrs Norris, Mr Collins o i Crawford. Il tema ricorre inoltre nell'opera di Henry James e negli eroi-mostro di Nabokov, Humbert, Kinbote, Van e Ada Veen. In questi romanzi l'immaginazione è equiparata all'empatia, alla capacità di immedesimazione: non possiamo vivere ciò che hanno vissuto gli altri, però in letteratura siamo in grado di comprendere anche i personaggi più mostruosi. Un bel romanzo è quello che riesce a mostrarci la complessità degli individui, e fa sì che tutti i personaggi abbiano una voce; è allora che un romanzo si può definire democratico - non perché sostiene la democrazia, ma per la sua stessa natura. L'empatia è il cuore di Gatsby, come di molti altri grandi romanzi - non c'è niente di più riprovevole che restare ciechi di fronte ai problemi e ai dolori altrui. Non vederli significa negare la loro esistenza.”

ReadingEmpathy
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“Imagination in these works is equated with empathy; we can't experience all that others have gone through, but we can understand even the most monstrous individuals in works of fiction. A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is called democratic—not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so. Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels—the biggest sin is to be blind to others' problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.”

EmpathyNovels
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“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…”

LiteratureEmpathy
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“I used to joke that we had prepared ourselves for a time like this by living with Mother. The problem with such a state of affairs was not that you did not get to do what you wanted---sometimes you did---but the effort to appease or resist the reigning deities left you so exhausted that it prevented you from ever really having fun. To this day having fun, just plain enjoying myself, comes at the cost of a conviction that I have committed an undetected crime.”

Growing UpMothers And DaughtersDysfunctional Families
Book:Things I've Been Silent About
Create image

“When we stop reading, we pave the way toward book burning; when we stop caring, we make way for someone else to take over control; when we prefer personality to character, and reality show or virtual reality to reality itself, then we get the kind of politicians that we deserve.”

ReadingSocial ResponsibilityPoliticiansTotalitarianismVirtual RealityReality TvAntipathyBook Burning
Book:Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times
Create image

“I opened it the way we used to open Hafez, closing our eyes, asking our question and letting our finger rest somewhere at random. It opened to the page in the middle of "Burt Norton,' beginning with the lines "At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor/fleshless./ Neither from not toward; at the still point,there the dance/is.”

ReadingBooksQuestions
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“I see a bird like a cock, which means good news, but you yourself are very agitated. A road that looks bright. And you are on the first step. You are thinking of a hundred things at the same time. One road is closed and dark, and the other is open and full of light. Both could happen; it is your choice. There is a key; a problem will be solved. ... A small ship that is still in the harbor and has not yet started to set sail.”

FutureAnxietyDecisionsChoiceFortunes
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“That was the first time I experienced the desperate orgiastic pleasure of this form of public mourning: it was the one place where people mingled and touched bodies and shared emotions without restraint or guilt. There was a wild, sexually flavored frenzy in the air. Later, when I saw a slogan by Khomeini saying that the Islamic Republic survives through its mourning ceremonies, I could testify to its truth.”

MourningIranCeremony
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in ones own home." Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes.”

LiteratureMoralityAdorno
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“How can we protect ourselves from a culture of manipulation, where tastes and flavors are re-created chemically in laboratories and given to us as natural food, where religion is packaged, televised and tweeted and commercials influence us to such an extent that they dictate not only what we eat, wear, read and want but what and how we dream. We need the pristine beauty of truth as revealed to us in fiction, poetry, music and the arts: we need to retrieve the third eye of imagination.”

Memoirs Of A GeishaAzar NafisiThe Republic Of Imagination
Book:The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books
Create image

“There are different forms of seduction, and the kind I have witnessed in Persian dancers is so unique, such a mixture of subtlety and brazenness, I cannot find a Western equivalent to compare it to. I have seen women of vastly different backgrounds take on that same expression: a hazy, lazy, flirtatious look in their eyes. . . . This sort of seduction is elusive; it is sinewy and tactile. It twists, twirls, winds and unwinds. Hands curl and uncurl while the waist seems to coil and recoil. . . . It is openly seductive but not surrendering.”

DanceIranSeductionPersian
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“I was reminded of a painter friend who had started her career by depicting scenes from life, mainly deserted rooms, abandoned houses and discarded photographs of women. Gradually, her work became more abstract, and in her last exhibition, her paintings were splashes of rebellious color, like the two in my living room, dark patches with little droplets of blue. I asked about her progress from modern realism to abstraction. Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.”

ArtRealityDreamsAbstraction
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“«Signora, le posso parlare un attimo?» [...] C'era un problema con Gatsby. Lo diceva per il mio bene. Per il mio bene? Che strana espressione. Con tutto il rispetto che aveva nei miei riguardi [...] aveva una lamentela da fare. Contro chi, e perché a me? Contro Gatsby. Gli domandai se avesse per caso sporto una formale denuncia contro il signor Gatsby, e gli rammentai che in ogni caso sarebbe stato inutile, dato che la morte estingue il reato. Ma c'era poco da scherzare. «No, professoressa, non contro il signor Gatsby; contro il romanzo». Era immorale. Insegnava ai giovani le cose sbagliate; avvelenava la loro mente - dovevo essermene senz'altro accorta anch'io. Veramente no, gli dissi. Gli rammentai che Gatsby era un'opera di narrativa, non un manuale di istruzioni per la vita. Di sicuro mi rendevo conto, insistette, che c'era chi prendeva a modello quei romanzi e quei personaggi. Forse il signor Gatsby andava bene per gli americani, ma non per la nostra gioventù rivoluzionaria. [...] Per Nyazi fra la realtà di tutti i giorni e quella immaginata da Fitzgerald non c'era differenza. Il grande Gatsby era un'opera emblematica, parlava dell'America, e l'America per noi era come il veleno. Era così e basta. Dovevamo insegnare agli studenti iraniani a combattere l'immoralità americana. Era serissimo, e in assoluta buona fede.”

RealityBooksGatsbyIranian Revolution
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry?”

CultureGirlAsksReligiousPracticeCenturyDiversityIslamAncientSensualIslamicGood TimesIranRegimesVeilsSubversiveDegradeReligious DiversityAncient HistoryFloggingHistory And CultureEthnic Diversity
Author:Azar Nafisi
Create image