I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you. In one way or another we articulate what has happened to us through the kind of people we become.

You need imagination in order to imagine a future that doesn't exist.

Once we know of atrocities we cannot remain silent, and knowledge inevitably leads to an urge to protect the innocent.

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.

She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and vulnerable at the same time.

That was the first time I experienced the desperate orgiastic pleasure of this form of public mourning: it was the one place where people mingled and touched bodies and shared emotions without restraint or guilt. There was a wild, sexually flavored frenzy in the air. Later, when I saw a slogan by Khomeini saying that the Islamic Republic survives through its mourning ceremonies, I could testify to its truth.