Hooman Majd · 272 pages
Rating: (1.9K votes)
“It is perhaps because of the Iranian concept of the home and garden (and not the city or town it is in) as the defining center of life that Iranians find living in a society with such stringent rules of public behavior somewhat tolerable. Iranian society by and large cares very little about what goes on in the homes and gardens of private citizens, but the Islamic government cares very much how its citizens behave once they venture outside their walls.”
― Hooman Majd, quote from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
“All business in Iran is like first time sex: first there are the promises, then a little foreplay, followed by more promises and perhaps a little petting...at that stage things get complicated - you're not sure who's the boy and who's the girl, but what you do know is that if you continue, you might get fucked...so you decide to proceed cautiously, touching here and touching there, showering the other party with compliments, and whispering an undying commitment, and then maybe, just maybe, it will all end in coitus, but it is rarely as satisfying for one party as it is for the other.”
― Hooman Majd, quote from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
“If we cannot understand the depth of feeling in the Muslim world toward Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islam as a political force, then we will be doomed to failure in every encounter we have with the world.”
― Hooman Majd, quote from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
“The last Shah's father, Reza Shah, made the chador for women and the turban for men illegal in the mid 1930's...In the 1930's women had their chadors forcibly removed from their heads if they dared wear them and were sometimes beaten as well if they resisted.”
― Hooman Majd, quote from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
“He had undoubtedly not availed himself of the ministry archives, archives that might have revealed to him that Iranian diplomats in Paris, from this, his own Foreign Ministry, had taken it upon themselves to issue Iranian passports to Jews escaping the very Holocaust they were aware of, but that he now denied.”
― Hooman Majd, quote from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
“Some people he said, think that freedom means men being able to wear shorts or women to go about without the hijab. Others think that freedom means having a full belly.”
― Hooman Majd, quote from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
Hooman Majd
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“But for a moment I stay there, suspended above the green swell of the land as though thrown up onto the crest of a wave, seeing for the first time a break in the at horizon. For this the boats crossed the ocean, the wagons climbed the mountain pass. For this the songs were sung with desert all around. This is what is given: the promise there is still a way, if we can find it, the promise we can always be renewed.”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Handmaid's Tale (Contemporary Classics)
“Are you fucking someone else?”
“We haven’t spoken in weeks.” I grit my teeth. “I haven’t seen you in weeks, and this is the first thing you ask me? How about, ‘Hello, Gillian. It’s been a long time since we last spoke. How are you?’”
“Hello, Gillian.” He mocks me, locking his eyes on mine. “It’s been a long time since we last spoke. How are you?” He doesn’t give me a chance to answer. “Are you fucking someone else?”
― Whitney G., quote from Turbulence
“Do you trust me?' the skull said.
...
'Yes,' I said. 'Sort of.'
'Then break the bloody glass.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“Descartes gave sight to the blind. These saw the errors of antiquity and of the sciences. The path he struck out is since become boundless [....] In fathoming this abyss no bottom has been found. We are now to examine what discoveries Sir Isaac Newton has made in it.”
― Voltaire, quote from Letters on England
Jacob
If I Die
The Power
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The Enchanted Forest...
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