Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)
Context: A novel is not an allegory... It is the 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 empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing.
On how a written work may speak to you in “Nilo Cruz by Emily Mann” https://bombmagazine.org/articles/nilo-cruz/ in BOMB Magazine (2004 Jan 1)
Irish Heartbeat
Song lyrics, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (1983)
“If you take care of your character, your reputation will take care of itself.”
From, The Apprentice, BBC television, 3rd June 2009 ( taken from “If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself.” ― D.L. Moodysee http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5083573.D_L_Moody ).
“Your passion must come from the things that fuel you from the inside.”
CMU Graduation speech (2008)
Context: You will need find your passion. Many of you have already done it, many of you will later, many of you may take to your thirties or forties, but don't give up on finding it. Right, then all you are doing is waiting for the reaper. Find your passion and follow it. And if there is anything that I have learned in life, you will not find that passion in things. And you will not find that passion in money. Because the more things and the more money you have, the more you will just look around and use that as the metric — and there will always be someone with more. Your passion must come from the things that fuel you from the inside. And honors and awards are nice things, but only to the extent that they regard real respect from your peers. And to be thought of well by people you think of more highly up is a tremendous honor I've been granted. Find your passion, and in my experience, no matter what you do at work or what you do in in official settings, that passion will be grounded in people. It will be grounded in the relationships you have with people and what they think of you when your time comes.
