quotes from Azar Nafisi, Henry James, T.S. Eliot
"One can believe [Henry] James's claim to an "imagination of disaster"; so many of his protagonists are unhappy in the end, and yet he gives them an aura of victory. It is because these characters depend to such a high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a movement inward that makes them whole. Their reward is not happiness- a word that is central in [Jane] Austen's novels but is seldom used in James's universe. What James's characters gain is self-respect."
-Azar Nafisi, "Reading Lolita in Tehran"
"I am incapable of telling you not to repine and rebel, because I have so, to my cost, the imagination of all things, and because I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say-- feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live."
-Henry James, letter to Clare Sheridan
"Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden."
-T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
-Azar Nafisi, "Reading Lolita in Tehran"
"I am incapable of telling you not to repine and rebel, because I have so, to my cost, the imagination of all things, and because I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say-- feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live."
-Henry James, letter to Clare Sheridan
"Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden."
-T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets