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Quote by Azar Nafisi

“What I am searching for is the gaps - the silences. This is how I see the past: as an excavation. You sift through the rubble, pick up one fragment here, another there, label it and record where you found it, noting the time and date of discovery. It is not just the foundations I am looking for but something at once more and less tangible.”

Quote by Azar Nafisi

Book:Things I've Been Silent About
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Things I've Been Silent About

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Author

Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi is an Iranian-born American writer and scholar, renowned for her experiences during the Islamic Revolution in Iran and her work 'Reading Lolita in Tehran'. She taught English literature at the University of Tehran and was forced to leave Iran after the revolution. Nafisi later moved to the United States and earned a Ph.D. from Georgetown University. more

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“Silence rose and crossed to the connecting door and knocked. The door was opened almost at once. Michael leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, a wicked smile playing about his sensuous lips. He was so very big this close—every time it surprised her and made her breathless. “Well, now, and when did ye decide to start knockin’ at me door?” Silence fought to keep her face from flaming as she remembered the last time she’d peeked through Michael’s door. She swallowed. “We’re bored.” “Is that so?” Michael glanced down. Silence followed his gaze and saw that Mary had crawled over to investigate. The baby grabbed a handful of her skirt and stood up. She kept one hand on Silence’s skirt and popped two fingers from the other into her mouth as she stared solemnly at Michael. “She looks a rare treat,” Michael said softly, watching the toddler. Silence smiled down at Mary. “She does indeed.” She glanced up and her heart squeezed at the gentle look on Michael’s face. As if she understood she was the subject of conversation, Mary lifted her arms—to Michael. “Up!” Michael arched an eyebrow. “Mouthy little thing, ain’t she?” But he bent and lifted the toddler.”

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“If I could record them and transmit them to the present age, they would constitute nothing more, nowadays, than dead sounds. They would be, in a word, sounds other than what they actually were, and from what their phonographic labels pretended they were – since it's in ourselves that the silence exists. It was while the sounds were still mysterious that it would have been really interesting to render the mystery palpable and transferable.”

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