Home > Work > Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return (Persepolis, #2)
1 " I finally understood what my grandmother meant. If I wasn't comfortable with myself, I would never be comfortable. "
― Marjane Satrapi , Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return (Persepolis, #2)
2 " In any case, it's the cowardice of people like you who give dictators the chance to install themselves! "
3 " You are putting yourself in serious danger...'I think that I preferred to put myself in serious danger rather than confront my shame. My shame at not having become someone, the shame of not having made my parents proud after all the sacrifices they had made for me. The shame of having become a mediocre nihilist. "
4 " Oh my!! How you've grown. Soon you'll be catching the Lord's balls. "
5 " We can only feel sorry for ourselves when our misfortunes are still supportable. Once this limit is crossed, the only way to bear the unbearable is to laugh at it. "
6 " Is religion defending our physical integrity or is it just opposed to fashion? "
7 " Life is too short to be lived badly. "
8 " Culture and education are the lethal weapons against all kinds of fundamentalism. "
9 " I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn't even know anymore why I was living. "
10 " Prosperity consists of two things: tea after a meal, and a cigarette after tea. "
11 " I'm happy to see you so well-settled here. Now you must make an effort, you must become somebody. I don't care what you do later, only try to be the best. Even if you become a cabaret dance, better that you dance at the lido than in a hole in the wall. "
12 " What do you want me to say, sir? That I'm the vegetable that I refused to become, that I'm so disappointed in myself that I can no longee look at myself in the mirror? That I hate myself? "
13 " Third: live together as long as you feel truly happy. Life is too short to be lived badly. "
14 " The harder I tried to assimilate, the more I had the feeling that I was distancing myself from my culture, betraying my parents and my origins, that I was playing a game by somebody else's rules. "
15 " I wanted to die. Where were my parents to take me in their arms, to reassure me? "
16 " In retrospect, I can see that I had always known that it wouldn't between us. But after my pitiful love story in Vienna, I needed to believe in someone again... "
17 " The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself:"Are my trousers long enough? Is my veil in place? Can my make-up be seen? Are they going to whip me?"- No longer asks herself:"Where is my freedom of thought? Where is my freedom of speech? My life, is it livable? What's going on in the political prisons?"It's only natural! When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.Showing your hair or putting on makeup logically became acts of rebellion. "
18 " Night brings good counsel", my grandmother always told me. "
19 " Things always happen when you least expect it "
20 " Where was my mother to stroke my hair?Where was my grandmother to tell me that lovers, I would have them by the dozen?Where was my father to punish this boy who dared hurt his daughter? Where? "