Sadegh Hedayat

Sadegh Hedayat (17 February 1903 – 4 April 1951) was Iran's foremost modern writer of prose fiction and short stories.

I write only for my shadow which is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it.

Sourced

My life appeared to me as unnatural, uncertain and incredible as the design on the pencase I am using at this moment.

• Their Jewish God is heavy, Cruel and implacable. He always orders to kill and plunder people, and before the day of Resurrection, He sends Mr. Messiah so he can get his people's income and slaughter them so much that his horse's knees surge in blood.

The Pearl Cannon

Sadegh Hedayat

• It is true that the Arabs were too lowly to do such insolence, this sedition was started by Jewish spies and they created (Islam) with their own hands to overthrow the civilization of Iran and Rome and they achieved their goal, but like the staff of Moses that He turned into a dragon and Moses himself was afraid of him, this seventy-headed dragon is devouring the world

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• The Irish were actually Iranians who migrated to Western Europe, tried to change the word "Iran", removed "an" and replaced it with "eland" and became "Ireland". Germanics were Iranians who migrated from Kerman province to the center of Europe. Page 25

The Blind Owl

As translated by Iraj Bashiri

• In life there are certain sores that, like a canker, gnaw at the soul in solitude and diminish it. (opening line)

• I write only for my shadow which is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it.

• In this base world, full of poverty and misery, for the first time I thought a ray of sunshine had shone on my life. But alas, it was not a sunbeam, rather it was only a transient beam, a shooting star, which appeared to me in the likeness of a woman or an angel.

• I was not in full control of myself, and it seemed that I knew her name from before. The evil in her eyes, her color, her scent and her movements were all familiar to me. It was as though my souls, in the life before this, in the world of imagination, had bordered on her soul and that both souls, of the same essence and substance, were destined for union. I must have lived this life very close to her. I had no desire to touch her; the invisible beams that emanated from our bodies and mingled were sufficient for me. Isn't this terrifying experience which seemed so familiar to met quite the same as the feelings of two lovers who feel that they have known each other before and that a mysterious relationship has previously existed between them? Was it possible that someone else could affect me? The dry, repulsive and ominous laughter of the old man, however, tore our bonds asunder.

• I was growing inward incessantly; like an animal that hibernates during the wintertime, I could hear other peoples' voices with my ears; my own voice, however, I could hear only in my throat. The loneliness and the solitude that lurked behind me were like a condensed, thick, eternal night, like one of those nights with a dense, persistent, sticky darkness which waits to pounce on unpopulated cities filled with lustful and vengeful dreams.

• What relationship could exist between the lives of the fools and healthy rabble who were well, who slept well, who performed the sexual act well, who had never felt the wings of death on their face every moment—what relationship could exist between them and one like me who has arrived at the end of his rope and who knows that he will pass away gradually and tragically?

• What is love? For the rabble love is a kind of variety, a transient vulgarity; the rabble's conception of love is best found in their obscene ditties, in prostitution and in the foul idioms they use when they are halfway sober, such as "shoving the donkey's foreleg in mud," or "putting dust on the head." My love for her, however, was of a totally different kind. I knew her from ancient times—strange slanted eyes, a narrow, half-open mouth, a subdued quiet voice. She was the embodiment of all my distant, painful memories among which I sought what I was deprived of, what belonged to me but somehow I was denied. Was I deprived forever?

• My life appeared to me as unnatural, uncertain and incredible as the design on the pencase I am using at this moment. It seems that a painter who has been possessed, perhaps a perfectionist, has painted the cover of this pencase. Often, when I look at this design, it seems familiar; perhaps it is because of this design that I write or perhaps this design makes me write.

• Finally I realized that I was a demi-god and that I was beyond all the low, petty desires of mankind. I felt the eternal flux within me. What is eternity? Eternity for me was playing hide-and-seek with that whore on the banks of the Suren river; it was a momentary closing of my eyes when I hid my head in her lap.

The Benefits of Vegetarianism

Compare that to a fruit shop adorned with pleasant, lush colors that smell like pomegranate. Compare apples, oranges, cherries, peaches, grapes and melons, and the vivid colors of various vegetables to the butcher shop, the hanging heart and intestines, the severed corpses, the split bellies, the broken legs that hang, and drop blood dripping from it.

• If the human race is to reach its peak of development one day, it will be in a natural environment with plant food. As cannibalism and artificial civilization corrupt him and drag him to the abyss of nothingness. Unless a humane race and a non-native whose life is governed by the laws of nature succeed him, otherwise his race will be shamefully extinguished.

• It should be noted that vegetarianism is still a source of ridicule for those who do not know the truth; How easily we laughed at our ancestors, the day will come when future generations will laugh at our superstitions.

• It is said that their souls (animals) are inferior. Yes, but in the end, like us, they feel pain and joy. Their inferiority determines for us the duty of the elder brother, not the right of tyranny and oppression.

• Everyone who eats meat must kill the animal himself. Because carnivorous animals do not take a assistant, or at least presence walk and spend an hour of their lives watching this beautiful meal and see how these delicious foods are prepared for them.

• As long as we do not suffocate the natural emotions of our hearts by force, it is clear that there is a feeling of hatred in humans for killing and pain of other animals, and it is also clear that when all people are forced to kill the animals they eat with their own hands, most of them turn to vegetarianism.

• Compare that to a fruit shop adorned with pleasant, lush colors that smell like pomegranate. Compare apples, oranges, cherries, peaches, grapes and melons, and the vivid colors of various vegetables to the butcher shop, the hanging heart and intestines, the severed corpses, the split bellies, the broken legs that hang, and drop blood dripping from it.