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

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

The price one pays when choosing exile is the loss of all that defines you as an individual. The only thing that makes this immense loss tolerable is the discovery of a self you did...

Iranian fiction has entered a new era…The Islamic Revolution has shaken all values and norms within society. Now, the images of women have to be rethought and redefined. Under extreme pressure, women must look at...

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 not so much reality but the...

I see people who talk about America, and then undermine it by not paying attention to its soul, to its poetry. I see polarization, reductionism and superficiality.

Other people’s sorrows and joys have a way of reminding us of our own; we partly emphasize with them because we ask ourselves: What about me? What does this say about my life, my pains,...

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

You don’t read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses...

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 reality, and that if you don’t compromise, you...

Whenever religion, no matter where it comes from, when it claims to spread the word of God through [the] State it becomes dangerous.

Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies. In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they...

Those in the west who dismiss the repressiveness of laws against women in countries like Iran, no matter how benign their intentions, present a condescending view not just of the religion but also of women...

The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in ones own home.” Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The...

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.

So few American novels have happy endings. Perhaps this is not surprising in a nation whose declaration of independence provides its citizens not with the right to happiness, but the right to its pursuit.

The negative side of the American Dream comes when people pursue success at any cost, which in turn destroys the vision and the dream.

First of all, there are aspects of culture which are really reprehensible, and we should [all] fight against it. We shouldn’t accept them. Second of all, women in Iran and in Saudi Arabia don’t like...

is as rare an appearance . . . as a Comet or an Earthquake.

Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they were using it as an instrument of control in the same way that in Mao’s China...

The crisis besetting America is not just an economic or political crisis; something deeper is wreaking havoc across the land, a mercenary and utilitarian attitude that demonstrates little empathy for people’s actual well-being, that dismisses...

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.

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 we took for granted. It questioned traditions...

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

Many times I tell my American students my Iranian students understood how valuable [freedom] is because they had been deprived of it. Sometimes in the West we need to be reminded of the fact that...

When the founding fathers conceived of this new nation, they understood that the education of its citizens would be essential to the health of their democratic enterprise. Knowledge was not just a luxury; it was...

The biggest crime in Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ is imposing your own dream upon someone else’s reality. Humbert Humbert is blind. He doesn’t see Lolita’s reality. He doesn’t see that Lolita should leave. He only sees Lolita...

My toe as a lethal weapon!

When I first left Iran at the age of 13, Iran had become such a shining star – it was the point to which all my desires and dreams returned.

somehow, somewhere” or Alice’s backyard, a world that runs parallel to the real one, whose occupants need no passport or documentation. The only requirements for entry are an open mind, a restless desire to know...

Once we know of atrocities we cannot remain silent, and knowledge inevitably leads to an urge to protect the innocent.

I would like to think of my own status as what you called ‘citizen of the world’ or a ‘citizen of a portable world,’ if not of the world.

My impulse now, as then, is to disagree. The majority of people in this country who haunt bookstores, go to readings and book festivals or simply read in the privacy of their homes are not...

Thus the regime has deprived Iranian women not just of their present rights, but also of their history and their past.

I searched modern fiction and poetry for clues to how we confronted and evaded reality, how we articulated our experience and turned to language not to revel ourselves but to hide. I was as sure...

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

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.

You need imagination in order to imagine a future that doesn’t exist.

It is not just bookstores and libraries that are disappearing but museums, theaters, performing arts centers, art and music schools— all those places where I felt at home have joined the list of endangered species....

My passion has always been books and literature, and teaching.

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

Unfortunately for governments like that of Iran, when they forbid something, people become more interested.

. . . none of us are as sophisticated in these matters as you think. You know I always feel, with every new person, as if I am starting anew. These things are instinctive. What...

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.

Between my first book tour, in 2003, and the next one, in 2009, many of the places I visited had undergone a significant transformation or vanished: Cody’s in Berkeley, seven branch libraries in Philadelphia, twelve...

Well, that was in 1995 when I resigned from my last academic job.

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 kind of people we become.

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...

È l’esperienza sensoriale di un altro mondo. Se non entrate in quel mondo, se non trattenete il respiro insieme ai personaggi, se non vi lasciate coinvolgere nel loro destino, non arriverete mai a indentificarvi con...

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...