"Reading Lolita in Tehran" [.]

[fiefoe]

__ This is Tehran for me: its absences were more real than its presences.
__ Facts exist only partially to us if they are not repeated and re-created through emotions, thoughts and feelings.
__ This is how memories invade me, abruptly and unexpectedly: drenched, I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.
__ This generation had no past. Their memory was of a half articulated desire, something they had never had. It was this lack, their sense of longing for the ordinary, taken-for-granted aspects of life, that gave their words a certain luminous quality akin to poetry.

__ The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter.
__ All we needed was to read and appreciate the cacophony of voices to understand its democratic imperative. This was where Austen's danger lay.

__ One of my favorite lines from the German thinker Theodor Adorno: "The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one's own home."
__ It felt good to know where to put the blame, one of the few compensations of victimhood-"and suffering is another bad habit," as Bellow had said in Herzog.

__ I discover that his smile is part of his physique.
__ the shadow of a conditional smile.
__ This sort of seduction is elusive; it is sinewy and tactile. It twists, twirls, winds and unwinds. Hands curl and uncurl while the waist seems to coil and recoil. It is calculated. It predicts its effect before another little step is taken, and then another little step.

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