Marjane Satrapi
I like to be sad once in a while. You need it for your equilibrium.Collection: Sad
It's true that, in Iran, women have half of the rights men do. And yet 66 per cent of students are women.Collection: Women
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.Collection: Travel
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.Collection: Chance
I am very bad at computers. I don't really know how to write email.Collection: Computers
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.Collection: Freedom
Cinema is a world of imagination.Collection: Imagination
When you say 'revolution' when you have only men outside, you know that something is going wrong. I'm not like a hardcore feminist, but I think that one of the things that makes the society advanced is equality between men and women. If half of the society is oppressed by the other half, it's not fine.Collection: Equality
The real war is not between the West and the East. The real war is between intelligent and stupid people.Collection: War
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.Collection: Humor
The first writing of the human being was drawing, not writing.
Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw, it seems a shame to choose one. I think it's better to do both.
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.
Revolutions just spread blood. Evolution - this is something that changes in the long term.
I don't want to quit smoking. I am convinced that if I quit smoking, the world would go to hell.
Anything that has a relationship with pleasure, we reject it. Eating, they talk about cholesterol; making love, they talk about AIDS; you talk about smoking, they talk about cancer. It's a very sick society that rejects pleasure.
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.
It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If evil has a geographical place, and if the evil has a name, that is the beginning of fascism. Real life is not this way. You have fanatics and narrow-minded people everywhere.
The best thing I ever did in my life was to ask, 'Do I like everybody?' And the answer was, 'No.' So why should everybody like me? If people are against me, so what? I'm against them too.
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?
Image is an international language.
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.
People, they think that animation is a style. Animation is just a technique. It's like, people, they think that comics is a style, like comics is a superhero story. Comic is just a narration, and is a medium, you can say any kind of story in comics and you can say of any kind of story in animation.
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.
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.
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.
All big changes of the world come from words.
I took three years of karate because of Bruce Lee, you know. I was a green belt.
My mother was the favorite child of her parents. My father was the favorite child of his parents. The result of these two favorite children was me. And I am an only child. So I was convinced that I was the center of the universe.
I have my dark side. You have your dark side. From the second that we have a brain, there are things that are not right - we are human beings with all these illusions and complexes and everything. That's attractive to me.
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.
This clash of the culture, East and the West, us and them, Muslim and Christian, does not exist.
I love the French for their sarcasm, their irony. I love them for their bad moods.
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.
The information I have about Iran is second hand.
I'm very open and never write what I'm going to say. Speeches bore everybody else. I have to freestyle. Every time, from one program to another, everything changes and I improvise.
You have to be narcissistic to be an artist. You have to think you are the centre of the whole thing; otherwise, why do you create? The only thing is to recognise it, and then you make the best of it.
If you have a little sensibility or a heart, you have all the reason to be depressed once in a while. But the depression is like a motor for creation. I need a little bit of depression, a bit of acid in my stomach, to be able to create. When I'm happy, I just want to dance.
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.
The music that I hate the most is R&B.
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.
It's always extremely interesting to speak at colleges. My books are taught in many colleges in America and are part of the educational system, so it's really important to me. I don't believe in so many things in life, but something I believe in is education.
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 wasn't made to take orders. My grandmother used to tell me: 'Laws are for idiots.' She was right.
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.
Well, I would have much preferred to have had a normal childhood. I would have loved it if my greatest dilemma, at 14, was whether to go to Benetton for my pullovers. I would have preferred not to have cried all the tears I have cried.
If the majority of people were right, we'd be living in paradise. But we are not living in paradise, we are living in hell. What does it mean? That means the majority of people are wrong. So I never believed what people told me.
I don't make a career plan. I take things the way they come.
My real background was in art studies. At the beginning I was a painter, then I was this graphic designer, then I became an illustrator, then I was a comic artist. But for me it's a different way of expression, a different field of art. They're not separated; everything for me is related.
It's not like since I make comics I only read comics and since I make movies I will only go out and watch movies. Any kind of artistic expression interests me; it goes from literature to music to sculpture, painting; whatever is extremely inspiring for me becomes a reference also for me.