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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.

From Said Sayrafiezadeh

I feel more Jewish than I do Iranian.

From Said Sayrafiezadeh

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.

From Said Sayrafiezadeh

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.'

From Said Sayrafiezadeh

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.

From Said Sayrafiezadeh

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.

From Said Sayrafiezadeh

My characters are not underachievers; they aspire to great things, but they are limited by the world around them.

From Said Sayrafiezadeh

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.

From Said Sayrafiezadeh

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.

From Said Sayrafiezadeh

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.

From Said Sayrafiezadeh

Said Sayrafiezadeh

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