I'm A Perfectly Equipped Failure.

If I Turned Towards Books, It Was Because They Were The Only Sanctuary I Knew, One I Needed In Order To Survive, To Protect Some Aspect Of Myself That Was Now In Constant Retreat.

I Think Islam Is In A Sense, In Crisis. It Needs To Question And Re-question Itself.

Reality Has Become So Intolerable, She Said, So Bleak, That All I Can Paint Now Are The Colors Of My Dreams.

I Would Like To Say How Much I Resent People Who Say Of The Islamic Republic That This Is Our Culture - As If Women Like To Be Stoned To Death, Or As If They Like To Be Married At The Age Of Nine.

The Novels Were An Escape From Reality In The Sense That We Could Marvel At Their Beauty And Perfection. Curiously, The Novels We Escaped Into Led Us Finally To Question And Prod Our Own Realities, About Which We Felt So Helplessly Speechless.