“I feel I have wasted my life … and know far too little for a woman of twenty-seven years … I feel a dizzying pressure under my skin … I want to make a hole in everything and penetrate it deep. I want to reach the heart of the earth. My love lies in there, a place where seedlings turn green and roots meet one another and creation continues even in disintegration. I think it has always been this way—in birth and then in death. I think my body is a temporary form. I want to reach its essence. I want to hang my heart like a ripe fruit on every branch of every tree.”

— Forugh Farrokhzad, in a letter to to Ebrahim Golestān, Behnam Bavandpour, ed., Majmooeh āssāreh Forugh Farrokhzad (Nima Press, 2002).