The class went all right, and the ones after became easier. I was enthusiastic, naive and idealistic, and I was in love with my books.
Teaching is a funny business; you want to share these glimpses of something real and profound, but half the time students want only to know their next assignment and what they will need to study for t...
She had not learned from reading it that adultery was good or that we should all become shysters. Did people all go on strike or head west after reading Steinbeck? Did they go whaling after reading Me...
Primo Levi once said, I write in order to rejoin the community of mankind. Reading is a private act, but it joins us across continents and time.
Pain and loss, like love and joy, are unique and personal; they cannot be modified by comparison to others.
It wasn't courage that motivated this casual, impersonal manner of treating so much pain; it was a special brand of cowardice, a destructive defense mechanism, forcing others to listen to the most hor...
It is said that the personal is political. That is not true, of course. At the core of the fight for political rights is the desire to protect ourselves, to prevent the political from intruding on our...
It is amazing how, when all possibilities seem to be taken away from you, the minutest opening can become a great freedom.
Is it possible to write a reverent novel, said Nassrin, and to have it be good? Besides, thecontract with the reader is that this is not reality, it’s an invented world. There must be some blastedspac...
In the Damascus airport she had been humiliated by what she was assumed to be, and when she returned home, she felt angry because of what she could have been.
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...
I wish wish I could steal the intricacies of language. But give my kids a break—remember, most of them were fed on Steinbeck’s The Pearl.
I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you.
Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power--the ones who had taken it away--become afraid, more protective of their endangered interests, more repressi...
He has demonstrated his own weakness: an inability to read a novel on its own terms. All he knows is judgment,
Dicono che il privato è politico; non è vero, naturalmente. Anzi, al centro della lotta per i diritti politici c'è proprio il desiderio di proteggere noi stessi, di impedire al politico di intrometter...
Chi sa ballare alla persiana? domando. Tutte si voltano a guardare Sanaz. Lei si schermisce, fa di no con la tessta. Cominciamo ad insistere, a incoraggiarla, formiamo un cerchio intorno a lei. Quando...
Adesso che non potevo più pensare a me come a un'insegnante, una scrittrice, che non potevo più indossare quello che volevo, né camminare per strada al mio passo, gridare se mi andava di farlo o dare...
A novel is not an allegory...it is a 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...
هذا ما تعنيه لي طهران حقاً : فغيابها يبدو أكثر حقيقة وعمقاً من حضورها