I'm sorry for those who are reading this blog and are SICK TO DEATH OF HEARING ABOUT BILLY FREAKING COLLINS. This post is all about another famous name at the literary conference I went to--Azar Nafisi. I will probably (if time allows) write about this conference from many different angles, but for now, I just want to record the quotes. Some of these are direct quotes, others are as best as my frantically scribbling hand could do.
Azar Nafisi.
Most known for: Reading Lolita in Tehran.
Focus of speach: Not generalizing people groups--had a political edge that I liked.
"The best thing about books is being connected to people that you should be connected through," (In reference to shared passions). "You go from being strangers to intimate strangers."
"You can't just kill the king, you have to change attitudes."
"(In literature), the villains are the ones who are blind."
"Risk is not always physical. Sometimes physical risk is easiest."
"All art is the result of once having been in danger."
"Our prophets are: on the right Glenn Beck, and on the left (some name I couldn't catch)."
"Curiosity is insubordination in its purist form."
"It's become very trendy for people to say the most asinine things."
"Literature is a celebration of the individual."
"If Clinton, Obama, and Palin are all Christian, who is to say which is more so?"
"Every single culture has something to be ashamed of. We are all men and women, and none of us are innocent."
"I sometimes forget who was president when Mark Twain and Hawthorne were alive, but I never forget who Mark Twain and Hawthorne were."
"Literature requires time, which most of us don't seem to have, but, like freedom, once you have it, you can't give it up."
"Generalizations come from complacency."
"Literature doesn't allow the comfort of generality. It demands specificity."
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