Quotes by Said Sayrafiezadeh - Page 1

I feel more Jewish than I do Iranian.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Iranian
Jewish
Feel More Than
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I work in the most non-Communist job. I work for 'Martha Stewart Living.'
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Martha
Martha Stewart
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My characters are not underachievers; they aspire to great things, but they are limited by the world around them.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Aspire
Great Things
Limited
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I wake when my wife wakes, at 7:30 A.M. I'd like to sleep longer, but she has to go off to work, and I'd be plagued with guilt.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Guilt
Wake
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My childhood was defined by my father's absence. His presence looms so large. Up until the age of 18, he was a superstar for me.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Absence
Defined
Superstar
Age Childhood Me
Presence
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I suppose my Iranian identity is one of the driving forces for being a writer: I want to set the record straight about who I really am.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Driving
Identity
Iranian
Forces
Suppose
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We were poor, my mother and I, living in a world of doom and gloom, pessimism and bitterness, where storms raged and wolves scratched at the door.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Bitterness
Doom
Gloom
Pessimism
Scratched
Storms
Wolves
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Of course, I had a paradigm of a certain city in my head when I wrote these stories, a city that inspired my imagination, but it was only inspiration.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Imagination
Cities
Inspiration
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I take pride in taking care of all the housework so that my wife, who works as a designer for Martha Stewart, won't need to sacrifice any of her leisure time when she gets home.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Designer
Housework
Leisure
Leisure Time
Pride
Sacrifice
Martha
Martha Stewart
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There was something so immensely redemptive and exciting for me to imagine that my unknown father was not just a man who had abandoned me but a noble man of adventure who had no choice.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Abandoned
Adventure
Unknown
Man Me Father
Man Father Me
Immensely
No Choice
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The thematic links came a little later, after I noticed I was gravitating towards certain elements - war, city, weather. So it wasn't all planned out from the start, it came out of the process.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
War
Cities
Weather
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I don't feel any ethical dilemma when I write. In my memoir, I was able to write with candor about the two most difficult people in the world to write with candor about - mom and dad. Everything else is downhill from there.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Dad
Mom
Writing
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I was born in Brooklyn and raised in Pittsburgh. I've never been to Iran, I don't speak the language, and, probably most important of all, my Iranian father left home when I was nine months old. That's the extent of my connection to Iran.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Brooklyn
Iran
Nine
Nine Months
Pittsburgh
Connection
Extent
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More people work at Walmart than anywhere else in the United States, but you wouldn't know that from our literature. I'm trying to get at the reality of this country by portraying the lives of many of my friends who I left behind in Pittsburgh.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Literature
Pittsburgh
Portraying
Walmart
Work Reality People
Anywhere
Anywhere Else
More People
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I need to feel as if everything is clean and in its proper place before I can even attempt to write one word. At least, that's what I tell myself. I make the bed, I put away the dishes, maybe I dust, maybe I do the laundry, maybe I go to the post office.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Bed
Clean
Dishes
Dust
Laundry
Office
One Word
Post Office
Myself Feel I Can
Myself Feel Everything
Attempt
Word
Least
Maybe
Post
Proper
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I liked the push and pull of that, between the outer political world and the inner personal lives of the characters. It's also real life... Many of us are keenly aware of world events, but break your nose and I bet that's the main thing you'd be focused on.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Character
Political
Real
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There's always been something a little pathetic for me at the work parties I've attended, especially thinking back to the restaurants I worked in. I remember a Christmas party in which we all got free T-shirts with the restaurant on the front and our names on the back.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Christmas
Pathetic
Restaurants
Work Thinking Always
Attended
Parties
Restaurant
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Stasis is something that has marked my life since I was a boy growing up in Pittsburgh with my mother. It was the natural state that we existed in. For one thing, she suffered from a debilitating depression throughout my childhood, and depression is nothing if not static.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Depression
Pittsburgh
Static
Life Childhood My Life
Debilitating
Suffered
Existed
Marked
Natural State
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The difference between our family and other poor families was that my mother actively chose to be poor. She was highly literate, and she had a college degree, but after my father left, she took the first secretarial job she could find and never looked for other employment again.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
College Degree
Employment
Family Mother Father
Actively
Chose
Family Father Never
Highly
Literate
Secretarial
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It's very difficult for me to look at politics with clear eyes. I'll read a story in the paper and the first thing that pops into my head is, what would my dad say about that? Then I try to break out of that and think, 'What would Said say about that,' and then it gets complicated.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Paper
Pops
First Thing
The First Thing
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The year the bus drivers went on strike in Pittsburgh, I was twenty-three and living on the edge of the city in a neighborhood that was on the verge of becoming a ghetto. I had just been fired from a good job as a cartographer in a design studio where I had worked for about four months.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Drivers
Ghetto
Good Job
Neighborhood
Pittsburgh
Verge
Edge
Fired
Strike
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When the ending finally comes to me, I often have to backtrack and make the beginning point towards that ending. Other times, I know exactly what the ending will be before I begin, like with the story "A Brief Encounter With the Enemy." It was all about the ending - that's what motivated me.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Encounters
Enemy
Stories
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I don't work with an outline, except a vague one in my head, a general idea of character, place, arc... I'm like a composer with a symphony in their head: I can hear the music, I just have to figure out how to put it down on paper. But I don't always know where my stories are going when I begin.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Character
Ideas
Symphony
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In many ways I'm similar to Barack Obama, who also has a strange name but was raised by a white American mother. His background is far more complicated than his name would suggest. Furthermore, the fact that I was a child during the hostage crisis has caused me to equate being Iranian with being alienated.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Barack
Complicated
Crisis
Hostage
Iranian
Caused
Alienated
Background
Barack Obama
Equate
Furthermore
Similar
Suggest
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I am haunted by what my life would have been had I not had the courage in my early twenties to leave Pittsburgh for New York City and really commit to being a writer. Pittsburgh is both post-industrial and provincial, and the opportunities there are limited. It would have been quite easy to simply drift through life.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Commit
New York City
Pittsburgh
Twenties
Drift
Haunted
Limited
Provincial
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I have to expend an awful lot of energy actively undoing the impact of my name. Understandably, people assume that I have at least some connection to Iran. The truth is that I don't. I have very little knowledge about the culture, the language, the history. I've never been to Iran. I've never even been inside a mosque.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Iran
Truth Is
Undoing
Actively
Assume
Awful Lot
Connection
Expend
Mosque
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The benefit of writing a collection - as opposed to a novel - is that I'm able to have some version of the war in each story without having to comment on its all-encompassing nature. Turn the page and here are new characters and new situations, but the war remains... Isn't that how life has been for us for over a decade?
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
War
Character
Writing
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While writing my memoir, 'When Skateboards Will Be Free,' I would sometimes have to pore over hours of microfilm at the New York Public Library in order to try to get one obscure detail right. For instance, was the Socialist Workers Party originally called the American Workers Party or the Workers Party of the United States?
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
American Workers
Instance
Library
Memoir
Obscure
Public Library
Socialist
Workers
Detail
Originally
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This is one of the ways fiction is more liberating than nonfiction - I don't have to be so concerned with fact. I had the paradigm of certain people in my head who became my characters, but I never considered these people to be from a "certain sector of society," unless we agree that we're all from certain sectors of society.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Character
Fiction
People
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[Ending] is partly drawn from a desire to shock the audience, to brutally de-romanticize what many Americans think is happening overseas. And partly drawn from my own childhood: violence and a loss of innocence. But keep in mind that, as a writer, I'm both the criminal and the victim. I'm not trying to get out of anything easy.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Childhood
Loss
Thinking
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Other families who are poor do what they can to get out of it. My mother did not. She did not utilise her resources. She had a degree. There was something she could have done, but she actively, purposely refused that so we could have this absolutely authentic experience of the worst of capitalism: 'See? Look how bad capitalism is.'
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Capitalism
Poor
Resources
Worst
Absolutely
Actively
Authentic
Degree
Families
Purposely
Refused
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I sometimes have to write for a while before I figure it out, pretend that I know what I'm doing, sort of like ad-libbing on stage until you remember your line - you hope you sound convincing to the audience. The key is to have enough material, enough threads, so that there's something that can be satisfyingly drawn to a conclusion.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Keys
Sound
Writing
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The daily quota I've set for myself is 500 words or approximately a page and a half double-spaced. Which isn't much, except that I'm extremely slow, extremely meticulous. 'Le mot juste' haunts me. On a good day, I will finally secrete the 500th word at about 5 o'clock, and I'll reward myself by going to Housing Works Bookstore to read.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Good Day
Housing
Meticulous
Quota
Approximately
Bookstore
Daily
Haunts
Page
Slow
Reward
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My sister married an American and took his name, and my brother has shortened Sayrafiezadeh to Sayraf. So now he's Jacob Sayraf, or sometimes Jake Sayraf. He made the change when he was a teenager, prior to the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis. So I don't think it was motivated by any anti-Iranian sentiment in the United States.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Sister
Brother
Crisis
Hostage
Iranian
Jacob
Married
Motivated
Revolution
Teenager
United States
Sentiment
Prior
Shortened
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I have no personal experience in the military. All I know about it is what I've seen in movies and read in books and watched on television. My knowledge is probably no more or no less than the average person's. 'A Brief Encounter with the Enemy' was created by taking bits and pieces from here and there, and then putting my own spin on them.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Knowledge
Average
Bits
Bits And Pieces
Enemy
Military
My Own
Television
Books
Seen
Less
Brief
Watched
Read
Encounter
Personal
Personal Experience
Putting
Spin
Taking
There And Then
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I was trying to hold up a mirror to this country, to reflect the past years or so, and the varying degrees in which we've been affected by the war(s) that doesn't seem to end. And we've all been affected somehow, even if we have no connection to the military, even if we don't know anyone who's killed or been killed. No one escapes something so large.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
War
Country
Military
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Since most of the action of the war actually happens off the page (offstage), I wanted to give the characters something they had to contend with on a daily basis, some sort of obstacle. Weather seemed to be the one great equalizer regardless of your station in life - when it snows, everyone is inconvenienced to a certain degree. Plus it's tactile, weather, it affects the skin.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
War
Character
Weather
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Such platitudes as "If you believe it, it will happen," "If you give 100%, you get 100%," "Good things happen to good people" people utter when we don't know what else to say. There's comfort in platitudes, and every so often they're accurate, but mainly they're hollow words. It's a sign of how little we're able to directly address the world around us. The language of the times reveals our avoidance.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Believe
Giving
People
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Love and happiness inextricably combined? I wanted love stories to coincide with war stories, I wanted hope for my characters, I wanted a sense of a future. So do they. So does the reader. But perhaps I shouldn't speak for everyone when I say that love and happiness are interdependent. In my own experience, happiness came with love. Specifically, my wife. That's when my own apathy and stasis ended for good.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
War
Character
Wanted Love
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But it's hard for me to pinpoint where all my characters and dialogue come from - imagination or real life. My memoir, of course, was all about my past, and many of the short stories cleave very closely to my life, but the more stories I wrote in the collection, the more that seemed to be invented, but who knows... I think I'm writing about a young woman with acne who shoplifts, but I'm really writing about myself.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
Character
Real
Writing
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An initial impulse of mine was to portray the way in which a city is impacted by war. But this is vague, no? After all, how do you actually have an entire city - or country, for that matter - be a character a reader can follow? One way is by making it smaller and personalizing it, by writing specifically about the citizens and the way they contend with the reality, even minutiae, especially minutiae, of their lives.
Said Sayrafiezadeh / Fiction Writer
War
Country
Writing
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Said Sayrafiezadeh Quotes - Page 1

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