Jews From The United States

"When restoration of injustice is costly, people tend to deny injustice by blaming the victims or by minimizing their hardships and disadvantages. In this manner, BJW-based motivation merges with people's self-interest."

"People, for the sake of their security and ability to plan for the future, need to believe they live in an essentially "just" world where they can get what they deserve, at least in the long run. It was further reasoned that being confronted with innocent victims of undeserved suffering poses a threat to that fundamental belief, and as a consequence, people naturally develop and employ ways of defending it. This may involve acting to eliminate injustices. But failing that, by blaming, rejecting, or avoiding the victim, or having faith that the victim will eventually be appropriately compensated, people are able to maintain their confidence in the justness of the world in which they must live and work for their future security."

"Decisions that negatively affect others, but that have adhered to all the requirements of rational self-interest, have been seen to result in serious emotional consequences for the decision makers. This regret, reluctance, and guilt, we argue, demonstrate the power of the justice motive."

"In my children’s fiction, I also want to teach them ideas. I don’t want them just to have a story: I’m giving somebody who perhaps knows nothing about Sephardic Jews a sense of that culture. Even if it is a preliminary sense, it’s an affirmation that this culture and these people exist. In that way, I’m bringing my ethnographic work even into a domain like the picture book."

"I step out, legs trembling a little but my heart full, and set forth on the next journey, entrusting myself to the beauty and danger of life all over again. (Author's Note)"

"reading is one of our greatest human treasures, to be passed on from generation to generation, so the world might be a better place for everyone. (Acknowledgements)"

"Decisions that were rational and justifiable according to social norms nevertheless have been known to leave the decision makers troubled by negative emotional consequences. These individuals, who have gone through great pains to act ethically and responsibly, may subsequently experience entirely unanticipated feelings of guilt, shame, and anger. Logically and ethically, by society’s standards they have done nothing “wrong,” and yet they are reacting as if they suddenly discovered they are responsible for someone’s undeserved suffering."

"“I’m a really bad test taker and I ended up bombing the LSATs twice and I was not able to get into a law school,” she says."

"She did the next best thing, she says. She drove to Disney World in Florida and asked if she could play the role of Goofy."

"You Italians have the most beautiful philosophy in the world. Which says: "Who does anything, gets it wrong". I have no difficulty in admitting I was wrong."

"Every person I know has a hidden half. (Part 4, p158)"

""There's such a thing as too much hope...It's like a black hole: you fall in, and there's no bottom. That's why [he] is the way he is: he can't tell the difference between what's possible, and what's not." (Part 6, p257)"

"Of all the stories I will tell about my mother, this is the one I cherish most. I like to see her at the point of inception, the moment that would set the course for all our lives and all the stories that followed. And though I always know the end even before I have said the first word, I like the possibility, the promise inherent in each new telling, of a different finish. (Part 1, p5)"

"What do you do with a loss you can neither cure, nor accept, nor overcome? (Part 6, p269)"

"I think a lot of people go to writing programs and don’t think of themselves as writers and don’t think of it as a career. Writing is not a hobby!"

"She's sixteen years old-a young woman in a city with blue mountains. (first line)"

"sometimes, truth alone will not suffice. (Part 6, p273)"

"At some point you just begin to take yourself a little less seriously."

"Everything always changes as you write."

"John Rechy taught me everything. He taught me the importance of structure and the importance of clarity. I see that in my own students as well, you know, confusing mystery with vagueness. He taught me the difference."

"Every time I write a book, I’m trying to figure out the answer to a question. By the time I’ve written the book and gone through different drafts, I’ve figured out the answer. With this book, the question was: Is there going to be a distinct Iranian-Jewish culture and community in the United States in the long run? And do we want to assimilate so much that we become part of the larger American Jewish community? And why have we only managed to integrate ourselves to the extent that we have?"

"What do you call that moment when we let go of the conviction, albeit illusory, that life will only grow larger? That the horizon will always expand?"

"Every time I do an event, invariably people in there will start asking questions and within minutes, it evolves into people expressing various forms of outrage: at their Iranian neighbor, at their Iranian ex-partner, at their Iranian client. A lot of the things they say about Iranians are true -- some of us are ostentatious, some of us are too clever in business -- but what people don’t realize is that some people in every community are like that. What’s happened with us is we’ve become identified only by our negative traits. We’re all getting blamed for the sins of the few in the community. I think the reason for that is that we are just very visible. We came to America as a big group and from the very start we made our presence known. I think people are reacting to that."

"(why did you choose close third for the POV? Why not first person?) GN: Because I wanted to have a voice that echoed the voice of an observer that wasn’t entirely objective or fair. The voice in the novel has a lot of overtones or judgment, because as a society this is the voice that is constantly defining all of us to each other. Opinions get repeated. I wanted the narrative to have that kind of community voice."

"The only way there will be peace with the Muslim world is if there is an Islamic Reformation the way there was the Christian Reformation. The trouble with Islam is that it has never been adapted to the modern age. It has never had that transition or an adaptation. If we still believed in the Bible the way they did before the Reformation we would still be burning witches. If you did everything you were supposed to do in the Torah a disobedient son would be taken into the city square and stoned to death. People will say that jihad doesn’t really mean to go out and fight with guns and bombs to recreate the caliphate. Well, actually it does. It doesn’t matter how much you wish it didn’t. It’s literal. So what you need are spiritual Muslim leaders to come out and say that this applied a thousand years ago, it doesn’t apply anymore, now we are going to interpret jihad as something internal and peaceful. Unfortunately, there have been some Muslim religious leaders who have tried to create that and they quickly got assassinated, because there are forces with interest in keeping these old interpretations relevant."

"Some readers told me there was a stark difference in the writing in my last book [Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith] between the sections set in Los Angeles and those set in Iran. The Los Angeles sections were harsh and devoid of the magic -- but it's much easier to see the dark parts when they're up close."

"On Israel’s Independence Day every year—it’s called something else there like “the worst day that happened to Arabs”—they have funeral marches in the streets all over the Muslim World and people walking like someone died. They mourn like people in Israel celebrate. Well, every year in Iran, the Jews march in the streets in mourning also because they have to prove to the government that they are not Zionists. Being Zionist is punishable by death but being Jewish under the mullahs is accepted. The Jews live in fear in many ways, but I think they are so used to it that the Jews who stayed compare those dangers with other dangers like being in the West and having your children become Westernized or assimilated or being here and not having a job or being unable to make a living."

"I used to write in Farsi when I lived in Iran. When I first came to America I wrote in French because my French was better than my English. But I've always liked reading in English. There is a freshness to literature in English. In French there are all these historical and grammatical rules. I also speak Spanish, so having read all these books before in all these languages makes the prose available to me a little richer. I can translate concepts from other languages that don't exist in English."

"there's a great resistance in the media to showing anything from the Middle East."

"(What do you think is the relationship between Iranian-Americans and Iranians?) It's a pretty close relationship. Of course I'm talking about the Iranians who are conscious of those outside, not those who live far outside the cities in the villages. To those who are conscious there's always been such an incredible relationship between America and Iran. To many it's still The Great White Hope. The "Great Satan" and name-calling and all that was the work of such a small proportion of the people. America is still known as the Land of Good and Plenty. There's a 24-hour AM radio station here in America and you can tell there are people coming here constantly from Iran. There is such little distance and difference between the countries, especially in the minds of the young. The two countries are in almost constant communication, especially with the Internet."

"I often feel disheartened by the direction that our politics, courts and culture are taking. But I do not lose faith in our country or its future. I remind myself how far we have come."

"Reaching this birthday with my health and wits mostly intact is a privilege. Approaching it with loving family, friends and creative collaborators to share my days has filled me with a gratitude I can hardly express. This is our century, dear reader, yours and mine. Let us encourage one another with visions of a shared future. And let us bring all the grit and openheartedness and creative spirit we can muster to gather together and build that future."

"It is remarkable to consider that television — the medium for which I am most well-known — did not even exist when I was born, in 1922. The internet came along decades later, and then social media. We have seen that each of these technologies can be put to destructive use — spreading lies, sowing hatred and creating the conditions for authoritarianism to take root. But that is not the whole story. Innovative technologies create new ways for us to express ourselves, and, I hope, will allow humanity to learn more about itself and better understand one another’s ideas, failures and achievements."

"For all his faults, Archie loved his country and he loved his family, even when they called him out on his ignorance and bigotries. If Archie had been around 50 years later, he probably would have watched Fox News. He probably would have been a Trump voter. But I think that the sight of the American flag being used to attack Capitol Police would have sickened him. I hope that the resolve shown by Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and their commitment to exposing the truth, would have won his respect."

"I was deeply troubled by the attack on Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 — by supporters of former President Donald Trump attempting to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Those concerns have only grown with every revelation about just how far Mr. Trump was willing to go to stay in office after being rejected by voters — and about his ongoing efforts to install loyalists in positions with the power to sway future elections."

"I don’t take the threat of authoritarianism lightly. As a young man, I dropped out of college when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and joined the U.S. Army Air Forces. I flew more than 50 missions in a B-17 bomber to defeat Fascism consuming Europe. I am a flag-waving believer in truth, justice and the American way, and I don’t understand how so many people who call themselves patriots can support efforts to undermine our democracy and our Constitution. It is alarming. At the same time, I have been moved by the courage of the handful of conservative Republican lawmakers, lawyers and former White House staffers who resisted Mr. Trump’s bullying. They give me hope that Americans can find unexpected common ground with friends and family whose politics differ but who are not willing to sacrifice core democratic principles."

"Well, I made it. I am 100 years old today. I wake up every morning grateful to be alive. Reaching my own personal centennial is cause for a bit of reflection on my first century — and on what the next century will bring for the people and country I love. To be honest, I’m a bit worried that I may be in better shape than our democracy is."

"I’ve been doing "Breakfast Thoughts", and I guess my Breakfast Thought at the moment is, uh, is "the moment." Every person who is seeing me now — some are seeing me within months of my saying this, some are likely to see this years after I have said this, but whenever all of you are seeing it — that will be the moment you’re seeing it — as this is the moment I’m saying it. And what that means to me is: living in the moment. The moment between past and present, or present and past. The moment between after and next, the hammock in the middle of after and next. The moment. Treasure it. Use it with love."

"But you know, I’ve always been excited about getting older. I love getting wiser and having more experience. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have vulnerabilities and discomforts around my age, but trying to pretend or hide the things that I feel insecure or uncomfortable about doesn’t make them any less comfortable, you know?"

"It’s actually a real honour to get older. Not everybody has that honour, with everything going on in this country, with all of the violence and the children that don’t get to live that long…"

"I want to be in a relationship with myself as I am. I don’t want to be fighting with an image that I put out that I can’t keep up with."

"But then when you hit high school you start interacting with the patriarchy."

"But what I would prefer is that I’m the poster child for living my life on my terms. And that there’s a version of that for everyone."

"I didn’t see enough examples of different versions of how a woman can find happiness and joy and power and sensuality, sexuality, all of that, without it being through the lens of how I’m seen by a man."

"I’ve always been a person who speaks up. I can’t help it. Sometimes the practice for me is – perhaps the exercise today is to not speak up."

"Home for me is about safety and embrace. It’s about shedding all the external masks that we have to wear out in the world. Home is really about beauty, safety, history. My friendships are home for me. My family is home for me. It’s an energetic connection that creates a sense of safety and groundedness, where I don’t have to wear any mask. I can just be myself."

"I don’t live my life for other people."

"It’s been a hard-earned journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance."

"I tried being small and feeling things in little ways. It took me a long time to get to know myself, to accept myself, and even on some days to really like and love myself. And then it took me a whole other load of years to have the courage to actually live in the world as that person. And it’s been trial and error, chewing on ground glass."

"People don’t want to be told that what they’re doing might not be the right thing or might not make everybody happy. But I am somebody who – I don’t just go along to get along."