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Tehran Quotes

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Tehran Quotes

“The sky [above Tehran] was like a star-eaten black blanket, and so far as I could read them its constellations were unfamiliar. Lawrence speaks somewhere of drawing 'strength from the depths of the universe'; Malcolm Lowry speaks about the deadness of the stars except when he looked at them with a particular girl; I had neither feeling. The founder of the Jesuits used to spend many hours under the stars; it is hard to be certain whether his first stirrings of scientific speculation or pre-scientific wonder about space and the stars in their own nature were some element in his affinity with starlight, or whether for him they were only a point of departure, but in this matter I think I am about fifty years more modern than Saint Ignatius; stars mean to me roughly what they meant to Donne's generation, a bright religious sand imposing the sense of an intrusion into human language, and arousing a certain personal thirst to be specific.”

LanguageConstellationsStarlightTehranSpecificityJesuitsPoint Of DepartureMalcolm LowrySaint Ignatius
Book:The Light Garden of the Angel King: Travels in Afghanistan with Bruce Chatwin
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“A far cry now that she is in Tajrish. This is District One. The posh end of town. Snuggled deep in between the streets of this bustling roundabout are where the rich live. She looks up, a huge billboard with a blue-eyed model sits there with a phone in his hand. Some brand she’s never heard of. She has never quite understood the infatuation Iranians have with celebrities and colored eyes. To her, it seems like any Iranian with green or blue eyes makes their way either on the big screen or on a billboard. The old traditional concept of Persian beauty, black eyes with a unibrow now replaced with Hollywood-inspired looks. The Leo DiCaprios, Brad Pitts of this world. Still a cheap knock-off of them as well.”

ModelsIranBlue EyesPersianTehranHollywood CultureTajrishBrad PittPersian PeopleLeonardo Dicaprio
Book:Tajrish
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“Right by the edge of the fractured pavement next to the uneven road circling the square sat a fifteen-year-old boy with a hard helmet. There's something wrong with a boy that age waiting to go to work. Sitting in a yoga pose, he had a piece of bread and some feta cheese in front of him next to a broken barrel filled with tar and wood. It was lit up, which would only mean it was there to keep him warm during the night.”

IranHard LifeTehranChild LaborChild LabourStolen Youth
Book:Tajrish
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“In the north of Tehran, right by the foothills of Tehran’s bit of the Alborz mountain range is Niavaran. The district is an entanglement of slopes and roads where way back in the day, going back to the Qajar era, villas and houses were all you would see. Now though it has become an extension of the city center with buildings and towers scattered across its narrow roads. Even with all of the congestion, the weather is a few degrees cooler than the rest of the city and it remains one of the “port out, starboard home” districts in Tehran.”

NeighborhoodIranTehranPoshNiavaran
Book:Tajrish
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“A slick BMW 5-Series pulls right by the traffic light. As the car comes to a halt, a bunch of kids, street kids, go to work. One of them, a young boy no more than eight years old kisses the BMW emblem on the hood. The driver, drenched in apathy, doesn’t even look up. Another kid comes by the side, begging the beamer’s owner for some cash. Everybody in Tehran knows that to pay these kids is bringing Slumdog Millionaire’s silver screen to the silver smog city.”

TehranPoverty InequalityTajrishSlumdog MillionaireHomeless Youth
Book:Tajrish
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“When the day comes that Tehran can announce its nuclear capability, every shred of international law will have been discarded. The mullahs have publicly sworn—to the United Nations and the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency—that they are not cheating. As they unmask their batteries, they will be jeering at the very idea of an 'international community.' How strange it is that those who usually fetishize the United Nations and its inspectors do not feel this shame more keenly.”

IranNuclear WeaponsUnited NationsEuropean UnionInternational LawTehranMullahsNuclear Program Of IranIran And Wmds
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Santiago de Chile sit on the ring of fire. Tehran, far away from the ring still suffers the same fate. Earthquake-prone, the city has learned to adapt. The city, stacked with apartments on top of one another, looks like a box of Lego. Tight alleyways, covered with buildings, stretch all the way to the foot of the mountains. The folks in Tehran don’t want to even imagine what chaos will ensue if a major earthquake strikes. The most frightening phenomenon though isn’t the rubble and building blocks crumbling down. None of that scares the people. What concerns them is if the mother of all earthquakes pays a visit, the biggest threat will be rats. Tehran’s underground has a burgeoning “ratopolis.” To every living human being in the city, there are three rats to match every living soul. And if the city collapses, three rats are enough to ravage through human flesh in a matter of days. So the urban myth goes. Even if bodies can be rescued from the rubble there’ll likely be carcasses left behind.”

IranLos AngelesRatsTokyoTehranEarthquakeRing Of FireUrban MythRatopolisSantiago De Chile
Book:Tajrish
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“It started with a nose job, a staple in one out of every five Iranians, when she was in her mid-twenties. Then it was Botox. Then a face-lift. Now she's one strike away from being a bona fide palang, the name Iranians give to women who've had more touch-ups than a brush on a canvas. The word means "leopard" and Sahar believes the more operations she has, the higher the chance of her finding a husband.”

IranianPlastic SurgeryBotoxTehranIranian WomenPersian PeopleIranian People
Book:Tajrish
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“Children whose developing lungs are particularly vulnerable suffer the most from air pollution. For children, breathing the air in cities with the worst pollution, such as Beijing, Calcutta, Mexico City, Shanghai, and Tehran, is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.”

ChildrenTwoSufferingCitiesAirWorstEnvironmentalVulnerableDevelopingBreathingSmokingMexicoPollutionCigarettePacksLungsCalcuttaBeijingTehranMexico CityShanghaiAir Pollution
Author:Lester R. Brown
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“The more aggressive our ideologies become, the more aggressive our discourse whether it's in the United States, from Washington D.C., or whether it's from Tehran, or from some underground Al-Qaeda cell. The more aggressive that discourse is, the more people of moderate persuasion have to organize and speak a voice of compassion. That means to feel with the other.”

PeopleFeelsMeanStatesSpeakVoiceUnitedCompassionUnited StatesIdeologyCellsAlsAggressiveOrganizeDiscoursePersuasionModeratesAl QaedaTehran
Author:Karen Armstrong
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“The president of the United States is supposed to lead the free world and not follow it. Other nations have been more outspoken. So, I hope that we'll hear more of this because young men and women taking to the streets in Tehran need our support. The signs are in English. They're basically asking for us to speak up on their behalf.”

MenWorldNeedsHas BeensStatesYoungSpeakNationsPresidentUnitedUnited StatesSupportStreetsMen And WomenAskingYoung ManBehalfOutspokenFree WorldTehran
Author:Barack Obama
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“My memories of Kabul are vastly different than the way it is when I go there now. My memories are of the final years before everything changed. When I grew up in Kabul, it couldn't be mistaken for Beirut or Tehran, as it was still in a country that's essentially religious and conservative, but it was suprisingly progressive and liberal.”

WayYearsStillsDifferentCountryReligiousMemoriesChangedGrewGrew UpFinalsConservativeProgressiveMistakenTehranBeirutKabul
Author:Khaled Hosseini
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“This is a perfect snapshot of the West at twilight. On the one hand, governments of developed nations microregulate every aspect of your life in the interests of 'keeping you safe.' ... On the other hand, when it comes to 'keeping you safe' from real threats, such as a millenarian theocracy that claims universal jurisdiction, America and its allies do nothing. ... It is now certain that Tehran will get its nukes, and very soon. This is the biggest abdication of responsibility by the Western powers since the 1930s.”

RealHandsGovernmentAmericaCertainNationsInterestPerfectResponsibilitySafeAspectUniversalClaimsThreatWestWesternAlliesTwilight1930sSnapshotsJurisdictionTehranTheocracyNukesAbdicationDeveloped Nations
Author:Mark Steyn
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“Argo might well be studied as a bait-and-switch masterwork: In showing the capture of the American Embassy in Tehran, Ben Affleck first made a fetish of authenticity, then served up a shamelessly Hollywood, and wholly fictional climax, then capped the whole thing off with a coda that was essentially a tribute to his movie's authenticity, complete with side-by-side photos of the actors and their near-identical real-life counterparts. Well done, sir!”

FirstsWellsMadeRealDoneWholeMightActorsSidesHollywoodReal LifeAuthenticityCaptureIdenticalTributeWell DoneBaitCounterpartsClimaxFetishTehranEmbassyArgo
Author:David Edelstein
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