Quotes from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“Life is too short to be lived badly.”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“I finally understood what my grandmother meant. If I wasn't comfortable with myself, I would never be comfortable.”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“You are putting yourself in serious danger...'

I think that I preferred to put myself in serious danger rather than confront my shame. My shame at not having become someone, the shame of not having made my parents proud after all the sacrifices they had made for me. The shame of having become a mediocre nihilist.”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“Culture and education are the lethal weapons against all kinds of fundamentalism.”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“In any case, it's the cowardice of people like you who give dictators the chance to install themselves!”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn't even know anymore why I was living.”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“Oh my!! How you've grown. Soon you'll be catching the Lord's balls.”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“Prosperity consists of two things: tea after a meal, and a cigarette after tea.”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“Is religion defending our physical integrity or is it just opposed to fashion?”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“I'm happy to see you so well-settled here. Now you must make an effort, you must become somebody. I don't care what you do later, only try to be the best. Even if you become a cabaret dance, better that you dance at the lido than in a hole in the wall.”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“Night fell... "Night brings good counsel", my grandmother always told me.”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“The harder I tried to assimilate, the more I had the feeling that I was distancing myself from my culture, betraying my parents and my origins, that I was playing a game by somebody else's rules.”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“I wanted to die. Where were my parents to take me in their arms, to reassure me?”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“What do you want me to say, sir? That I'm the vegetable that I refused to become, that I'm so disappointed in myself that I can no longee look at myself in the mirror? That I hate myself?”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“Third: live together as long as you feel truly happy. Life is too short to be lived badly.”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“In retrospect, I can see that I had always known that it wouldn't between us. But after my pitiful love story in Vienna, I needed to believe in someone again...”
― Marjane Satrapi, quote from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

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Popular quotes

“I read an article once that said that when women have a conversation, they're communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they're actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person's body language.
That is, on many levels, astounding to me. I mean, that's like having a freaking superpower. When I, and most other people with a Y chromosome, have a conversation, we're having a conversation. Singular. We're paying attention to what is being said, considering that, and replying to it. All these other conversations that have apparently been booing on for the last several thousand years? I didn't even know that they existed until I read that stupid article, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
...
So, ladies, if you ever have some conversation with your boyfriend or husband or brother or male friend, and you are telling him something perfectly obvious, and he comes away from it utterly clueless? I know it's tempting to thing to yourself, 'The man can't possibly be that stupid!'
But yes. Yes, he can.
Our innate strengths just aren't the same. We are the mighty hunters, who are good at focusing on one thing at a time. For crying out loud, we have to turn down the radio in the car if we suspect we're lost and need to figure out how to get where we're going. That's how impaired we are. I'm telling you, we have only the one conversation. Maybe some kind of relationship veteran like Michael Carpenter can do two, but that's pushing the envelope. Five simultaneous conversations? Five?
Shah. That just isn't going to happen. At least, not for me.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Cold Days

“Museum labels are positively not allowed to say ‘halfway between Australopithecus africanus and Homo habilis’. History-deniers seize upon this naming convention as though it were evidence of a lack of intermediates in the real world. You might as well say there is no such thing as an adolescent because every single person you look at turns out to be either a voting adult (eighteen or over) or a non-voting child (under eighteen). It’s tantamount to saying that the legal necessity for a voting age threshold proves that adolescents don’t exist.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

“You make me think I might discover parts of myself I doona know exist.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from The Highlander's Touch

“We had for so long accepted her obedience to our will that when it ceased to be given naturally, it came as a considerable chock; yet there was no option but to accept the change, strange and bewildering as it was, for obedience cannot be extorted.”
― Kamala Markandaya, quote from Nectar in a Sieve

“Vision is also a fickle creature. You can see an object a hundred times, a thousand times, and it remains unchanged. Then in one swift second you realize it has been changing all along and your eyes hid it from you. Savannah”
― Janette Rallison, quote from My Fair Godmother

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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