You need imagination in order to imagine a future that doesn't exist. Azar Nafisi More Quotes by Azar Nafisi More Quotes From Azar Nafisi 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 soul imagination evil Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams. Azar Nafisi color dream reality those who judge must take all aspects of an individual's personality into account. Azar Nafisi individual personality judging When I walked down the streets, I asked myself, are these my people?, is this my hometown, am I who I am? Azar Nafisi hometown who-i-am people We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle. Azar Nafisi settling crime pay There is little consolation in the fact that millions of people are unhappier than we are. Why should other people's misery make us happier or more content? Azar Nafisi littles facts people Thus the regime has deprived Iranian women not just of their present rights, but also of their history and their past. Azar Nafisi regimes rights past Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth. Azar Nafisi real trying fiction The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, participating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality. Azar Nafisi brutality dancing mind 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 shoes different literature 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. Azar Nafisi reading discovery reality I'm a perfectly equipped failure. Azar Nafisi Art is as useful as bread. Azar Nafisi art-is bread art The more we die, the stronger we will become Azar Nafisi stronger dies Imagine you are walking down a leafy path...The sun is receding, and you are walking alone, caressed by the breezy light of the late afternoon. Then suddenly, you feel a large drop on your right arm. Is it raining? You look up. The sky is still deceptively sunny...seconds later another drop. Then, with the sun still perched in the sky, you are drenched in a shower of rain. This is how memories invade me, abruptly and unexpectedly. Azar Nafisi light rain memories The novels were an escape from reality in the sense that we could marvel at their beauty and perfection. Curiously, the novels we escaped into led us finally to question and prod our own realities, about which we felt so helplessly speechless. Azar Nafisi speechless perfection reality It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one. Azar Nafisi tehran dies causes 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. Azar Nafisi pain heart lying The reason I am so popular is that I give others back what they need to find in themselves. You need me not because I tell you what I want you to do but because I articulate and justify what you want to do. Azar Nafisi want giving needs In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter. Azar Nafisi betrayal lying art
