Bookish Quotes: "Reading Lolita in Tehran"

READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN by Azar Nafisi, page 94:

"...most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable."

...and from page 47:

"Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense, the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies. In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his or her own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors, and infidelities of life."