“The situation began to change, revolutionary conditions was created…we simply wanted to change the regime.”

The entirety of this discourse was such that it encouraged the kind of ascendancy for a man like Ayatollah Khomeini.

When there is a crisis, the first thing that gets damaged and gets harmed is democracy.

I went to the front, but I never participated in the war itself.

Whatever Iranian people have bought, they have bought in the black market.

Today, as a result of a miraculous set of circumstances,

Would Americans accept if we decided to come here and decide who your rulers should be? So why do you expect us Iranians to accept the idea that the United States shall come in there and decide who shall govern us?

When I talk about secularism, I’m talking about theories today. To give you for example, one example: Those who consider themselves followers of Mosaddeq today are adamantly against federalism.

Of course, everyone knows that I’m also opposed to the Iranian regime and I have said that we must change the regime. But it is us, the Iranians, that must change the regime.

When I’m speaking, I’m speaking only for myself. At the same time, I know that these ideas have wide support among the Iranian population.

And amongst the lower strata in Iranian society, we are witnessing an increasing rise of the expectation and it’s clear that the regime is incapable of satisfying these demands.

I am against revolution and am proud of it. Democracy cannot be created through revolutions.

It is like living with your wife, with whom you are in love and you are intensely involved in, but you also have tensions. And their position is that they want to deny that these tensions exist.

There is more disgruntlement, but because there is no media, the voice of this opposition is not heard outside Iran.

We believe in equal rights for all people in all nations. If Israel, the United States, Russia, Pakistan, other countries, China, have the right to have a nuclear program and nuclear bomb, Iran, too, must have that same right.

The issue has two dimensions. One is the legal dimension and the other one is the issue at the realpolitik. [In the] legal realm.

When women push their headscarf back an inch or two, this is interpreted to be a political act.

Whether this happens because they stay so long and attend their work so diligently that they forget the faces and persons, which they first sat down with, or whatever it is, they seldom rise from the toilet the same woman they appeared when they began to dress

I only began to sing because I couldn’t get a job as an actress.

Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road, a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the Pass.

I could think of nothing. And, slowly, it was upon exactly that nothingness that my mind began to dwell, that constant sense of wanting without having, of being hated without reason.

You began your journey here as a pup. Now you must find your way back. A new quest, a new start.

You begin to understand that warriorship is a path or a thread that runs through your entire life. It is not just a technique that you apply when you are unhappy or depressed. Warriorship is a continual journey. To be a warrior is to learn to be genuine in every moment of your life. That is the warrior’s discipline

They began to tune up, and suddenly the auditorium was filled with a single sound.

I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That’s so many pages longhand.