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“He (the Shah) liked to cite one of his favorite quotes, ‘Ingratitude is the prerogative of the people,â€� and on another occasion said, ‘If the Iranian people were fair and compared their situation with other countries and how Iran was fifty years ago, they would see that they were living in peace. They had it so easy that they decided to have a revolution to supposedly further improve their lives. But this was not a revolution of the Iranian people. In fact it was collective suicide on a national scale that took place at the height of prosperity.”
― Andrew Scott Cooper, The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran

“The white butterly
slowly sinks
into the wine of your age.”
― Bijan Elahi, High Tide of the Eyes

“Young Iranians educated at the Sorbonne returned to Iran as committed Marxists willing to subjugate themselves to Khomeini’s leadership of the anti-Shah opposition.’[Marx] exposes the imperialists and their rape of all the countries of the Third World, including Iranâ€� parroted one student, a leftist who donned a chador not because she understood or believed in Islam but because she wanted to make a political statement against the Shah’s regime. Though Marx had condemned religion as the ‘opiate of the masses â€� in developing countries it is different. At times, religious feelings and social movements go hand in hand. That is the way it is now in Iran. We are all of us united against the Shah. We are in an Islamic country, and all social movements inevitably have a religious coloring. We do not believe there will ever be Communism here as there is Communism in Russia or China. We will have our own brand of socialism.â€� Remarks like hers pointed to a curious phenomenon last seen in Imperial Russia sixty years before: Iran’s best-educated minds helping their future executioners erect scaffolds in their name.”
― Andrew Scott Cooper, The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran

“A far cry now that she is in Tajrish. This is District One. The posh end of town. Snuggled deep in between the streets of this bustling roundabout are where the rich live. She looks up, a huge billboard with a blue-eyed model sits there with a phone in his hand. Some brand she’s never heard of. She has never quite understood the infatuation Iranians have with celebrities and colored eyes. To her, it seems like any Iranian with green or blue eyes makes their way either on the big screen or on a billboard. The old traditional concept of Persian beauty, black eyes with a unibrow now replaced with Hollywood-inspired looks. The Leo DiCaprios, Brad Pitts of this world. Still a cheap knock-off of them as well.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“Mochaker, mersi, tashakor, sepas gozar, daset dard nakoneh, mamnoon; the number of words Iranians use to say “thank youâ€� are never-ending.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“It started with a nose job, a staple in one out of every five Iranians, when she was in her mid-twenties. Then it was Botox. Then a face-lift. Now she's one strike away from being a bona fide palang, the name Iranians give to women who've had more touch-ups than a brush on a canvas. The word means "leopard" and Sahar believes the more operations she has, the higher the chance of her finding a husband.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish