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Azar Nafisi Biography

Azar Nafisi (Persian: آذر نفیسی‎; born 1948) is an Iranian writer and professor of English literature. She has resided in the United States since 1997 and became an American citizen in 2008.

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Azar Nafisi Quotes

I believe in empathy. I believe in the kind of empathy that is created through imagination and through intimate, personal relationships. I am a writer and a teacher, so much of my time is spent interpreting stories and connecting to other individuals. It is the urge to know more about ourselves and others that creates empathy. Through imagination and our desire for rapport, we transcend our limitations, freshen our eyes, and are able to look at ourselves and the world through a new and alternative lens.

Believe, Created, Eye, Relationships, Teacher, Urge

In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, especially with regard to women's rights, as anti-Islamic and pro-Western, justifying its brutalities by ascribing them to Islam and Iran's culture.

Apologists, Brutalities, Islamic, Justifying, Past, Rights

I finally returned to Iran in 1979, when I got my degree in English and American literature, and stayed for 18 years in the Islamic republic.

American, Iran, Islamic, Stayed, Years

I would like to say how much I resent people who say of the Islamic Republic that this is our culture - as if women like to be stoned to death, or as if they like to be married at the age of nine.

Age, Islamic, People, Say, Women

Basically, fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. In the same way that Hitler evoked a mythological religion of German purity and the glory of the past, the Islamists use religion to evoke emotions and passions in people who have been oppressed for a long time in order to reach their purpose.

Hitler, Mythological, Order, Passion, Past, Religion

I think Islam is in a sense, in crisis. It needs to question and re-question itself.

Crisis, Islam, Needs, Sense, Thinking

When I walked down the streets, I asked myself, are these my people?, is this my hometown, am I who I am?

Asked, Down, Hometown, People, Streets, Who I Am

Every culture has something to be ashamed of, but every culture also has the right to change, to challenge negative traditions, and create to new ones.

Challenge, Challenges, Culture, Negative, Right, Traditions

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.

Becomes, Evil, Imagination, Soul, Survive

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. . .

Aspect, Dimensions, Individuals, Oneself, Shoes, Spheres

For more than 30 years the Islamic regime and its apologists have tried to dismiss women's struggle in Iran as part of a western ploy.

Dismiss, Iran, Islamic, Part, Struggle

The dearer a book was to my heart, the more battered and bruised it became.

Battered, Book, Dearer, Inspirational, Motivational

After the rigged Iranian presidential elections in 2009, the Islamic regime attacked the 'humanities' as the main source of protests, the most effective tool used by the West, especially America, to corrupt and incite Iranian youth, and finally closed down all the Humanities departments in Iran's universities.

America, Closed, Humanities, Iran, Islamic, Regime

That, of course, is what great works of imagination do for us: They make us a little restless, destabilize us, question our preconceived notions and formulas.

Formulas, Imagination, Littles, Preconceived, Restless

I eat my heart out alone.

Alone, Eat, Heart, My Heart

This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry?

Girl, Islamic, Poetry, Religious, Underage, Wearing

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.

Reality, Perfection, Speechless, Curiously, Sense, Helplessly

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.

Change, Love, Miss, Person, Strange, Strange Places

Lots of times you can feel as an exile in a country that you were born in.

Born, Country, Exile, Lots, Times

Poor reading, like poor writing, is imposing what you already know on texts. You should go into reading to discover, not to reaffirm what you know.

Imposing, Like, Poor, Reading, Texts, Writing

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Azar Nafisi Biography

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