Quotes from book
Reading Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Azar Nafisi

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books is a book by Iranian author and professor Azar Nafisi. Published in 2003, it was on the New York Times bestseller list for over one hundred weeks and has been translated into 32 languages

“Yes, the novel is about concrete living relationships, a man's love for a woman, a woman's betrayal of that love. But it is also about wealth, its great attraction as well as its destructive power, the carelessness that comes with it, and, yes, it is about the American dream, a dream of power and wealth, the beguiling light of Daisy's house and the port of entry to America. It is also about loss, about the perishability of dreams once they are transformed into hard reality. It is the longing, its immateriality, that makes the dream pure.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

“Do not, under any circumstances belittle a works 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 book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

“I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

“Art is as useful as bread.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

“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 book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

“It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

“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 book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

“Memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)
Context: As I trace the route to his apartment, the twists and turns, and pass once more the old tree opposite his house, I am struck by a sudden thought: memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally.

“[A] novel is not moral in the usual sense of the word. It can be called moral when it shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

“Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

“Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with someone you loathe.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

“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 cormulas about good and evil.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

“None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

“Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

“You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

“What we in Iran had in common with Fitzgerald was this dream that became our obsession and took over our reality, this terrible, beautiful dream, impossible in its actualization, for which any amount of violence might be justified or forgiven.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

“This, I believe, is how the villain in modern fiction is born: a creature without compassion, without empathy.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

“Dreams, Mr. Nyazi, are perfect ideals, complete in themselves. How can you impose them on a constantly changing, imperfect, incomplete reality? You would become a Humbert, destroying the object of your dream; or a Gatsby, destroying yourself.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

“It is because these characters depend to such a high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a movement inward that makes them whole. Their reward is not happiness — a word that is central in Austen's novels but is seldom used in James's universe. What James's characters gain is self-respect.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

On Henry James and his novels
Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

“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.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

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