Lots of times you can feel as an exile in a country that you were born in.
Azar NafisiRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A novel challenges our beliefs, prompting self-reflection rather than adhering to traditional notions of morality.
This quote by Azar Nafisi highlights the profound impact literature can have on our understanding of morality. Rather than simply teaching a moral lesson, a novel has the power to disturb our complacency and make us question our own beliefs and the absolutes we hold. It suggests that the true purpose of a novel is to provoke thought and introspection, pushing us to confront the complexities of our convictions.
Themes
NovelMoralityLiteratureBeliefsSelf-ReflectionIntrospection
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on the impact of literature in a book club.
More from Azar Nafisi
All quotes →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.
Azar NafisiRead
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 NafisiRead
I believe that it is only through empathy, that the pain experienced by an Algerian woman, a North Korean dissident, a Rwandan child or an Iraqi prisoner, becomes real to me and not just passing news. And it is at times like this when I ask myself, am I prepared - like Huck Finn - to give up Sunday school heaven for the kind of hell that Huck chose?
Azar NafisiRead
I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.
Azar NafisiRead
It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.
Azar NafisiRead
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The central problem of novel-writing is causality.
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Literature is dangerous: it awakens a rebellious attitude in us.
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The novel that an author writes is often not the novel that the reader reads, and most of the 'messages' in a novel are put there by the reader. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. That's how literature functions.
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The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance of hierarchical relationships, and absolute ideas of right and wrong. Any society based on the latter will find novels inherently immoral and subversive.
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One was a book thief. The other stole the sky.
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If a writer knows what he or she is doing, I'll go along for the ride. If he or she doesn't... well, I'm in my fifties now, and there are a lot of books out there. I don't have time to waste with the poorly written ones.
Stephen KingRead