Nastaran

“I'm a stranger in my own home! The tragedy of our whole country is the same: we are all alienated, strangers in our own land. It's tragic. The odd thing is that we have never got used to it. Yet, woe betide us we do. The irony is that, if you really want to be seen as a good Iranian, and especially if you aspire to high office in this country, you first have to be a foreigner, someone who wasn't born here at all. On the other hand, if you were born and bred here and try to remain true to yourself, your country and your people, then alienation is the most lenient punishment you expect.”
― Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, The Colonel

“Surely it is an odd way to spend your life - sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist, except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice.”
― Paul Auster

“Memory is the space in which a thing happens for a second time.”
― Paul Auster

“نمیدانم. اما چه درهم پیچ و گره خورده است درونم، و چه زوزه های خوار شده ای را می شنوم، و چه نا توانمندی غریب و کشنده ای حس می کنم از بابت آنچه عقل نامیده می شود”
― محمود دولت آبادی / Mahmoud Dolat Abadi, سُلوک