I like to be sad once in a while. You need it for your equilibrium.
— Marjane Satrapi
The most exciting time is when I think of an idea and how I imagine I can make it. It would be wonderful if there was a projector inside my eye that and it could just put the idea on the screen for people to see.
I call Iran home because no matter how long I live in France, and despite the fact that I feel also French after all these years, to me the word 'home' has only one meaning: Iran. I suppose it's that way for everyone: Home is the place where one is born and raised.
For me, drawing is a question of death and life. Every day I draw, I write, I do something.
Human beings have a lot of problems identifying themselves with other human beings who don't resemble them exactly. But there's something about drawing that means that anyone can identify to a drawing. I mean, people can identify themselves with Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.
If today I have to make a political statement, it is, 'I love beauty.' I think beauty makes people better.
The movie business is not about the money. Of course, you need money to make the movie. If you have a small budget, adapt yourself. Having $200 million dollars doesn't ensure that you're definitely going to make a good movie. There's so many examples that prove that.
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.
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.
I don't like 'graphic novel.' It's a word that publishers created for the bourgeois to read comics without feeling bad. Comics is just a way of narrating - it's just a media type.
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.
You know, comics were created at the same time as the cinema. And the cinema very quickly became a major art. Cartooning didn't become a major art. There's a reason for that. People don't know how to deal with drawings.
I had this fantasy that in a democracy the government was the population. So I came to America and got a big slap in my face... Americans were not what I thought. I thought I was going to see bastards and I saw nice people, very friendly to me.
I hate this word 'graphic novel.' It is a term publishing houses have created for the bourgeois so they wouldn't be ashamed of buying comics... I'm not a graphic novelist. I am a cartoonist and I make comics and I am very happy about it.
I am absolutely not a feminist, I am against stupidity, and if it comes from males or females, it doesn't change anything. If it means that women and men, they are equal, then OK, certainly I am a feminist.
I have been brought up open-minded. If I didn't know any people from other countries, I'd think everyone was evil based on news stories. But I know a lot of people, and know that there is no such thing as stark good and evil. Isn't it possible there is the same amount of evil everywhere?
I don't like the word 'autobiography.' I rather like the term 'autofiction.' The second you make a script out of the story of your life, it becomes fictional. Of course, the truth is never far. But the story is created out of it.
Americans think cinema is about storytelling; I don't believe that. I think it's a language and everyone has to find their own way of speaking. It's not so much what you say as the way you say it.
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.
My culture comes from everywhere. I'm sick of this notion of nationality, that if you're brought up in the same city or same country you're the same. Even three kids brought up in the same family with the same genes, they are not the same. Just consider a human a human.
I had two major activities as a child. I was trying to put on shows with kids in my street, or I was drawing. Actually, what I'm doing now is exactly what I was doing then. Either I'm drawing, or I'm gathering people for a common project. The only difference is that now they are paying me for that.
This clash of the culture, East and the West, us and them, Muslim and Christian, does not exist.
It's cinematographic to smoke. Imagine Lauren Bacall without a cigarette.
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.
If it's a good work of adaptation, the book should remain a book and the film should remain a film, and you should not necessarily read the book to see the film. If you do need that, then that means that it's a failure. That is what I think.
In the West, people don't have any real problems. It's all based on bad conscience, a very Christian notion. I don't have any bad conscience. If there's a God that created us, if I am bad, it's his fault.
'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 don't consider myself as a feminist but more a humanist.
When you make a book or you make a movie, it is almost like hitting on somebody. It's not because you want to seduce people that you will seduce them; you can hit on somebody and it doesn't work. But when you hit on them and it works, then it's really cool.
A Muslim fanatic and a Christian fanatic, a Jewish fanatic, a secular fanatic, an atheist fanatic, a communist fanatic - all of them are the same. The thinking that, 'If you don't think like me, that if you are not with me, then you are against me;' this is something to condemn.
I don't think of myself as a rebel; I just say what I think.
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'm a pacifist. I believe there are ways to solve the world's problems. Instead of putting all this money to create arms, I think countries should invest in scholarships for kids to study abroad. Perhaps they could become good and knowledgeable professors in their own countries. You need time for that kind of change, though.
Writing is not for me. I completely lose my sense of humor when I write. I become extremely pathetic, very sensational. Images give me possibilities that I don't have with words.
I don't watch many comic-book movies. But I loved 'Sin City.'
Death, torture and prison are part of daily life for the youth of Iran. They are not like us, my friends and I at their age; they are not scared. They are not what we were. They hold hands and scream: 'Don't be afraid! Don't be afraid! We are together!' They understand that no one will give them their rights; they must go get them.
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.
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 don't think that I have ever been rebellious. The thing is that I don't believe in people - what people tell me. I have to accept it in my own brain first. I don't listen to anyone, never.
I don't want to quit smoking. I am convinced that if I quit smoking, the world would go to hell.
I think animation is like running a marathon, and making a movie is like a 100 meter sprint. The question is: are you a marathon man or are you a sprinter? I realized that I was more of a sprinter than a marathon man. With a long, long project, I get bored easily.
I love the French for their sarcasm, their irony. I love them for their bad moods.
As a director, you have to understand what is happening - if I don't understand it, you can't make changes.
I am very bad at computers. I don't really know how to write email.
I'm not a religious person at all.
I think the only universal thing is one individual. If you talk about a country or a nation or a culture, it's so vague. I mean what is a nation? A nation is full of nice and bad and long and tall and short and thin people. It's not like everybody is the same.
I never wanted to make a graphic novel. As soon as you become a 'writer,' you have to be intelligent all the time... I like the fact that I have the right once in a while to say silly things.
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.
If people are given the chance to experience life in more than one country, they will hate a little less. It's not a miracle potion, but little by little you can solve problems in the basement of a country, not on the surface.
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.
