Quotessence
Home / Authors / Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllTehranEmpathyRealityIranPeopleImaginationIfsLiteraturePastWayIndividualIslamicReadingArtDreamFictionHeartNovelRegimesWorld

Famous Azar Nafisi Quotes

“We speak of facts, yet facts exist only partially to us if they are not repeated and re-created through emotions, thoughts and feelings. To me it seemed as if we had not really existed, or only half existed, because we could not imaginatively realize ourselves and communicate to the world, because we had used works of imagination to serve as handmaidens to some political ploy.”

IfsWorldFactsFeelingsPoliticalUsedSpeakRealizingImaginationEmotionHalfCommunicateThoughts And FeelingsPloy
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“What dazzles us in Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra are not the alluring mythologies about the evasive queen, but the astonishing if rare historical facts that Schiff has meticulously and lovingly excavated. Schiff offers not just Cleopatra's story but the story of an amazing era, one that has vanished but still affects us, questioning the way we look at myth, history, and ourselves.”

IfsWayLooksStillsFactsStoriesOffersHistoricalMythMythologyErasQueensQuestioningAstonishingDazzleAlluringHistorical Facts
Author:Azar Nafisi
Create image

“A novel is not an allegory.... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing.”

IfsWorldHeartCharacterAbleDestinyNovelInvolvedEmpathyBreathsSensualBreathingAnother WorldAllegoryInhaleTehran
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Create image

“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.”

IfsDifferentLiteratureIndividualSidesBecomingAspectMurderShoesOneselfDimensionsSpheresContradictoryRuthlessRefrainTehranDifferent Dimensions
Author:Azar Nafisi
Create image

“We do not read in order to turn great works of fiction into simplistic replicas of our own realities, we read for the pure, sensual, and unadulterated pleasure of reading. And if we do so, our reward is the discovery of the many hidden layers within these works that do not merely reflect reality but reveal a spectrum of truths, thus intrinsically going against the grain of totalitarian mindsets.”

IfsRealityOrderTurnsReadingPleasureFictionPureDiscoveryRewardsMindsetSensualLayersGrainGreat WorkSpectrumReplicaPleasure Of Reading
Author:Azar Nafisi
Create image