Hooman Majd

There's a lack of knowledge about Iran and the Iranian people.

Foreign journalists have to have an approved interpreter assigned them, which they have to pay for, who also acts as guide. As an Iranian, even writing for foreign media, I've been mercifully unrestricted.

I grew up thinking of myself as an American but also, because of my parents and the Iranian culture that was in our home, as an Iranian. So if there's any such thing as dual loyalty, then I have it - at least culturally.

I was born in Iran, left at a very young age - less than a year old - and grew up and was educated in the West.

Inside Iran, people are actually quite well-educated about America. There are things they don't understand, particularly in the government, but the people, by and large, know the American sensibility quite well, and the reverse is not true.

I know that my cell phone in Iran... is bugged, and they listen in, and my emails, I'm sure, are monitored inside Iran. They have my email address; it's not like they can't snoop on it.

The city of Tehran is a very modern metropolis, and there's an emphasis in the Islamic republic on science and advancement and technology.

This sounds like a cliche, but I always wanted to write. After college, I did some writing and realized very quickly that it's hard to make a living as a writer. At that point, I was more interested in fiction writing.

I got a couple of stories published, but the kind of money you were making for publishing a short story, I could see I wasn't going to make a living at it.

As a child, I was always very interested in music and had friends who were in the music business. I kind of accidentally fell into it and loved it. There was no reason not to - it was a great career.

The wrong Democratic reaction to a stupid Republican utterance is to play hurt.

A popular bumper sticker post-9/11, and pretty faded these days, proclaims drivers of the cars to be 'Proud to be an American.' It really should say 'Lucky to be an American,' for I doubt very much that the drivers had much say in having been born here, and are not old enough to have participated in the drafting of the Constitution.