We All Had To Pay, But Not

Memories Have Ways Of Becoming Independent Of The Reality They Evoke. They Can Soften Us Against Those We Were Deeply Hurt By Or They Can Make Us Resent Those We Once Accepted And Loved Unconditionally.

You Don't Read Gatsby, I Said, To Learn Whether Adultery Is Good Or Bad But To Learn About How Complicated Issues Such As Adultery And Fidelity And Marriage Are. A Great Novel Heightens Your Senses And Sensitivity To The Complexities Of Life And Of Individuals, And Prevents You From The Self-righteousness That Sees Morality In Fixed Formulas About Good And Evil.

We Speak Of Facts, Yet Facts Exist Only Partially To Us If They Are Not Repeated And Re-created Through Emotions, Thoughts And Feelings. To Me It Seemed As If We Had Not Really Existed, Or Only Half Existed, Because We Could Not Imaginatively Realize Ourselves And Communicate To The World, Because We Had Used Works Of Imagination To Serve As Handmaidens To Some Political Ploy.

The Reason I Am So Popular Is That I Give Others Back What They Need To Find In Themselves. You Need Me Not Because I Tell You What I Want You To Do But Because I Articulate And Justify What You Want To Do.

For More Than 30 Years The Islamic Regime And Its Apologists Have Tried To Dismiss Women's Struggle In Iran As Part Of A Western Ploy.