Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm extremely unbearable. You know, I'm narcissistic and at the same time I'm very charming - I think.
In any case, it's the cowardice of people like you who give dictators the chance to install themselves!
It's true that, in Iran, women have half of the rights men do. And yet 66 per cent of students are women.
The real war is not between the West and the East. The real war is between intelligent and stupid people.
If today I have to make a political statement, it is, 'I love beauty.' I think beauty makes people better.
As a director, you have to understand what is happening - if I don't understand it, you can't make changes.
I realized that I was more of a sprinter than a marathon man. With a long, long project, I get bored easily.
'The Jungle Book.' It's one of the best animated films ever. I saw it when I was small at a cinema in Tehran.
I like to make mechanical stuff. Once I make a film I have to do whatever I can make onstage I make it onstage.
I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn't even know anymore why I was living.
For me, who loves to draw and who loves to write and cannot choose between one or the other, the comic is the best form.
I wanted to do my artistic work, and in Iran you have censorship. It was difficult for me to do the work I wanted to do.
My mother always told me I had to do 100 times better than a man. I had to work hard at maths, and learn four languages.
America is a very special place. In this country, you have the best and the worst at the same time. Whatever you can imagine.
I'm not a politician. I don't know how to solve the problems of the world. But as an artist, I have one duty: to ask questions.
Drawing - it's the first language of human beings, before writing, before even talking, before words, human beings was drawing.
Hunger eats civilization. The West is not hungry; that's why they can say they're so civilized. Civilization is the biggest bluff!
You cannot be completely nice. It's impossible. Who is it? Who is the perfect guy? Show him to me! It doesn't exist. And thank god.
You draw the character from all angles - side, profile, back, etc. so the animator has this character in all the ways it looks like.
The Germans sell chemical weapons to Iran and Iraq. The wounded are then sent to Germany to be treated. Veritable human guinea pigs.
Smoking kills you, but life kills you, and if you don't want to die, go into a freezer when you are born and nothing will happen to you.
I'm a very individualistic person. That is why I don't belong to any political party or anything. I really believe in justice and freedom.
I became the voice of a generation in a very surprising way, because many Iranians recognize themselves in it. But that is not what I wanted.
Drawing is the first language of the human being before writing. It's a transcription of how the human being sees reality, not reality itself.
The most natural thing for us is drawing. The characters [in Persepolis] are hand drawn. We're not technical people. We don't know how to type.
I'm not somebody that keeps the thing in her heart. I can get very angry for five minutes, but then it's finished. Once I've yelled, it's over.
My point of view when I make a book or I make a movie is to see the humanistic point of view. The point of view of the daily life of normal people.
I think with pictures; I'm a very lousy writer. If I write without pictures, I become this pathetic chick sitting somewhere trying to be interesting.
If you're not [Federico] Fellini you might make something very vulgar. Animation made it possible to maintain unity with all these different narratives.
You know, I'm a really individualistic person. I'm extremely narcissistic and egocentric, too. So I have one life, and I have to live it the way I want.
You hear people saying, 'Oh I'm so tired, I've had enough of Cannes.' How can you have enough of Cannes? It's just the best place to be, like a fairytale.
If you know a little bit the psychology of human beings, you have to understand that if you say something you should not do, then everybody wants to do it.
There are things that I love in Iranian cinema and things that I don't. In Iranian cinema, you have to use metaphor because you are living under a dictatorship.
I like making comics and animation because it takes such a long time. I'm not a runner of the 100 meter. I like marathons. The longer it takes, the better I feel.
Evil is international and the fanatic is international and universal. There is no difference between a Muslim fanatic, a Christian fanatic, even a secular fanatic.
I'm someone who lived in a war for five years. I received bombs on my head every day of my childhood. Did that stop me from living? Did that stop me from laughing?
We can only feel sorry for ourselves when our misfortunes are still supportable. Once this limit is crossed, the only way to bear the unbearable is to laugh at it.
The way that you remember your life, it's never linear. You have flashes of different moments of your life, and the flashes aren't equal; they have different styles.
I loved Chiara Mastroianni voice, her talent, her generosity. We rehearsed for two months...She's a workaholic and perfectionist, like Vincent [Paronnaud] and myself.
I always say to people, 'You know, if Romeo and Juliet got married, nobody would care about them.' Imagine Romeo and Juliet, six kids yelling, 'Mama, Mama, Papa, Papa!'
Life is complex. You don't have any person who is nice from the beginning until the end. You don't always have the notion of redemption. The bad people don't always pay.
When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.
People are so afraid to say the word 'comic'. It makes you think of a grown man with pimples, a ponytail and a big belly. Change it to 'graphic novel' and that disappears.
People are so afraid to say the word "comic". It makes you think of a grown man with pimples, a ponytail and a big belly. Change it to "graphic novel" and that disappears.
I'm not a very good financing person. I don't even know how much money I have in my bank account. I never have opened one single envelope from the bank - they freak me out.
You know, the cynicism that is in the politics, it is not for my soul. It makes me - out of me, an extremely bitter, cynical person that I hate to see in the mirror, really.
But violence is news, to a certain extent, and people don't want complicated news. Because as soon as you realize things are complicated, your life becomes more complicated.
The language in a comic book or a graphic novel and the cinematographic language are really not the same language. They are false brother and sister. It's not at all the same.
With animation, if something does not fit, you always have the time to change it. When you make a live-action movie, when your days of shooting are over, they are over forever.
All this misjudgment that we have of each other is based on ignorance. The second you get to travel, you see that human beings, no matter where they come from, they are the same.