Gina B. Nahai Quotes

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?

(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.

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!

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

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

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

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 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)

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.

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?

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)

Everything always changes as you write.

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.

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