9 Quotes by Jasmin Darznik

If he could not restore her to the status of a respectable woman, then Sohrab would make her into something else entirely, something hitherto unknown in their entire extended family, an educated woman, a professional woman.

All at once the desert was everywhere, and I was overcome with a feeling of relief. Sand, rocks, hills—the whole landscape was tinted the same shade of orange as the sky.

It was autumn, the season of pomegranate and quince. The scent of roasted nuts and barbecued corn from the street vendors, of mud-packed alleyways, gasoline fumes, and concrete roads—I hadn’t known, until I encountered them again, how much I’d missed the city.

Live every day as if you might be struck blind--that was the rule I made for myself now. In those first few days after the quarantine was lifted, we went around marveling at the smallest things, as if the Spanish flu had rendered us all blind & we'd suddenly gained our sight again. Every detail seemed suddenly as sharp as if seen for the first time. Life returned to SF, and it had never been more precious.

Remember the flight, for the bird is mortal.

Art could survive; even when suppressed, even when outlawed, it could survive far worse fates than fire.

A woman could see herself better where she wasn’t known, I decided.

I was a woman and I couldn’t speak with the voice of a man, because it was not my voice – not true and not my own. But there was more to it than that. By writing in a woman’s voice I wanted to say that a woman, too, is a human being. To say that we, too, have the right to breathe, to cry out, and to sing.

We only lose ourselves by looking back.