Shahrnush Parsipur > Quotes

“Touba wished to be alone. She did not actually know what that meant—perhaps it was that she wanted to feel free. She had always felt spiritually alone, but growing up communally and being constantly among others, she had not had the chance to experience true solitude.”
― Shahrnush Parsipur

“In a deserted stretch of the Karadj highway Munis had come face-to-face with unbridled lust, although she knew what lust was before being touched by it. The problem was that she had an unbounded awareness of things, an awareness that instilled undue caution in her, making her fearful that action would lead to ignominy, humiliation. This created in her a desire to be ordinary, average. Yet she did not truly know what it meant to be ordinary. She did not know that it meant not loving an earthworm, not genuflecting at the altar of withered leaves, not standing in prayer at the call of a lark, not climbing a mountain to see the sunrise, not staying awake all night to gaze at the Ursa Major. She did not differentiate between earth and gravel, but she distinguished the earth from the sky. She had not seen the skies of the earth, but she knew there were earths of the sky. She saw herself in an inevitable process of stagnation. She was already partially rotten within.
"What can I do with this mass of trivial knowledge?" she wondered aloud. "How can I cut through it?”
― Shahrnush Parsipur, Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran

“Their life is neither good nor bad. It just goes on.”
― Shahrnush Parsipur, Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran

“it is always the heart's desire that drives one insane”
― Shahrnush Parsipur, Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran

“join the family in the orchard where she had to tolerate the children who screamed all the time as they gorged themselves with cherries giving themselves diarrhea and eating yogurt at night as antidote.”
― Shahrnush Parsipur, Women Without Men

“She had not learned to be malicious. She only knew malice.”
― Shahrnush Parsipur, Women Without Men

“Haji Adib pressed his lips together in anger. He decided, "Yes, the earth is round. Women think. And soon they shall have no shame." A small cloud covered the sun, a gust picked up some dust and twigs from the ground. "That's the way it is. As soon as they discover they are able to think, they shall raise dust.”
― Shahrnush Parsipur

“It doesn't make sense for a woman to go out in the first place. Home is for women, the outside world for men.”
― Shahrnush Parsipur, Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran

“Somewhere Fa’iza had read that people with round faces are mentally defective. She had run to the mirror to make sure she did not belong to this retarded group”
― Shahrnush Parsipur, Women Without Men

“Her female fate was to bend, to become small, to fold; thus people would leave her alone and let her share herself in other ways. Love for her had to be of another kind. This love was a stranger to nighttime restlessness. It had no knowledge of trembling bodies and palpitating hearts. It was directed at reaching out rather than union. It worked according to a strategy that was opposite to that of the human male. Therefore, she could not laugh when she wished. She could not eat when she wished. She needed to draw a circle and put her genie—the evil and fire of her worldy desires—firmly under her control.”
― Shahrnush Parsipur

“Mahdokht turned pale. She did not know how to respond to this insult. What was this guy thinking ? Who did he think she was ? What did he really want ?”
― Shahrnush Parsipur, Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran

“As we were walking along I was thinking about how many people had to drown so that the first human could learn to swim. Even so, there are still those who drown.”
― Shahrnush Parsipur, Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran