"When I think of how their talents were wasted, my
resentment grows for a system that either physically
eliminated the brightest and most dedicated or forced
them to lay waste to the best in themselves..."
Chapter 18, final paragraph
Mr. Nahvi...wrote neat philosophical treatises on the
dangers of doubt and uncertainty. He asked whether the
uncertainty James made such a fuss over was not the
reason for Western civilization's downfall. Like many
others, Mr. Nahvi took certain things for granted, among
them the decay of the west. He talked and wrote as if this
downfall were a fact that even Western infidels did not
protest.
Chapter 17
"He...lectured me, mostly about Western decadence and
how the absence of "the absolute" had been the cause of
the downfall of Western civilization. He discussed these
matters with assured finality, as facts that could not be
argued."
Chapter 14
"...a line from Nietzsche that struck me as pertinent to our
situation. 'Whoever fights monsters,' Nietzsche had said,
'should see to it in that in the process he does not
become a monster. And when you look long into an
abyss, the abyss also looks into you.'"
All above quotes are from Reading Lolita in Tehran
by Azar Nafisi
San Diego Education
Report
|
...Quangel is a taciturn man, but a moment
comes, at his grotesque trial, when he can
no longer contain himself: “It was then that
Quangel laughed for the first time since his
arrest, the first time in a very long time. He
laughed with wholehearted gusto. The
preposterous comedy of this gang of
criminals branding everyone else as war
criminals was suddenly too much for him to
take.”...
The Banality of Good
New York Times
By ROGER COHEN
Published: May 3, 2010