Art is no longer snobbish or cowardly. It teaches peasants to use tractors, gives lyrics to young soldiers, designs textiles for factory women's dres….

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..

I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you. In one way or another we articulate what has happened to us through the ki….

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 ….

A bad author can take the most moral issue and make you want to just never, ever think about that moral issue..

What dazzles us in Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra are not the alluring mythologies about the evasive queen, but the astonishing if rare historical facts th….

The reason I am so popular is that I give others back what they need to find in themselves. You need me not because I tell you what I want you to do ….

Visa for Avalon is a testament to the power of fiction. It illuminates the truth at the heart of what is commonly called reality. This account of liv….

When I was teaching at the University of Tehran we were struggling against the implementation of the revolution rules..

i could have told him to learn from Gatsby. from the lonely, isolated Gatsby, who also tried to retrieve his past and give flash and blood to a fancy….

There is little consolation in the fact that millions of people are unhappier than we are. Why should other people's misery make us happier or more c….

The best work of literature to represent the American Dream is 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It shows us how dreaming can be tainted by ….

Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is no….

The revolution taught me not to be consoled by other people's miseries, not to feel thankful because so many others had suffered more. Pain and loss,….

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-Is….

America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry?.

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 mea….