{"author":"Azar Nafisi","author_id":"Azar+Nafisi","total_quotes":65,"quotes":[{"text":"Other people's sorrows and joys have a way of reminding us of our own; we partly empathize with them because we ask ourselves: What about me? What does that say about my life, my pains, my anguish?","author":"Azar Nafisi","tags":["anguish","empathy","joy","life","pain","sorrow"],"id":31260,"author_id":"Azar+Nafisi"},{"text":"Between my first book tour, in 2003, and the next one, in 2009, many of the places I visited had undergone a significant transformation or vanished: Cody’s in Berkeley, seven branch libraries in Philadelphia, twelve of the fourteen bookstores in Harvard Square, Harry W. Schwartz in Milwaukee and, in my own hometown of Washington, D.C., Olsson’s and Chapters.","author":"Azar Nafisi","tags":["america","bookstores","publishing","reading"],"id":35794,"author_id":"Azar+Nafisi"},{"text":"The Islamic Revolution, as it turned out, did more damage to Islam by using it as an instrument of oppression than any alien ever could have done.","author":"Azar Nafisi","tags":["islam","oppression"],"id":48915,"author_id":"Azar+Nafisi"},{"text":"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.","author":"Azar Nafisi","tags":["adorno","literature","morality"],"id":51329,"author_id":"Azar+Nafisi"},{"text":"You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.","author":"Azar Nafisi","tags":["complexities","individuality","insight","issues","learning","life","morality","novels","reading","self-righteousness","sensitivity","society"],"id":60497,"author_id":"Azar+Nafisi"},{"text":"Jefferson, who spent his life collecting books, many of which he donated to the Library of Congress, boasted that America was the only country whose farmers read Homer. “A native of America who cannot read or write,” said John Adams, “is as rare an appearance . . . As a Comet or an Earthquake.","author":"Azar Nafisi","tags":["america","reading"],"id":62740,"author_id":"Azar+Nafisi"},{"text":"The crisis besetting America is not just an economic or political crisis; something deeper is wreaking havoc across the land, a mercenary and utilitarian attitude that demonstrates little empathy for people's actual well-being, that dismisses imagination and thought, branding passion for knowledge as irrelevant.","author":"Azar Nafisi","tags":["empathy","imagination","thought"],"id":65519,"author_id":"Azar+Nafisi"},{"text":"But it was women like Rudabeh who planted in my mind the idea of a different kind of woman whose courage is private and personal. Without making any grand claims, without aiming to save humanity or defeat the forces of Satan, these women were engaged in a quiet rebellion, courageous not because it would get them accolades, but because they could not be otherwise. If they were limited and vulnerable, it was an audacious vulnerability, transcending the misogyny of their creator and his times.","author":"Azar Nafisi","tags":["courage","rebellion"],"id":66044,"author_id":"Azar+Nafisi"},{"text":"Once we know of atrocities we cannot remain silent, and knowledge inevitably leads to an urge to protect the innocent.","author":"Azar Nafisi","tags":["silent","know","protect "],"id":85945,"author_id":"Azar+Nafisi"},{"text":"Don't go chasing after the grand theme, the idea, I told my students, as if it is separate from the story itself. The idea or ideas behind the story must come to you through the experience of the novel and not as something tacked onto it.","author":"Azar Nafisi","tags":["novels"],"id":87501,"author_id":"Azar+Nafisi"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":65,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}