Azar Nafisi

said, “When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you anyway.”

He claims, “You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. . . . The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”

He found the protest novel the opposite of revolutionary because it neatly categorizes everything and everyone, relieving us of ambiguities, contradictions, and complications, letting us bask in the knowledge that no matter what happens, the lines are drawn, and we are all safe as long as we don’t cross them. Baldwin kept crossing the lines.