When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground, and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit. And if it does, the fruit will not be as good as it was in its original place. This is a rule of nature. I think if I had left my country, I would be the same as the tree.

I think being someone in love is so hard to define, so temporary, because retrospectively we often deny the state in which we were in love.

I think it was [Jean-Luc] Godard who said that life is nothing but a bad copy of film, but then our ambition must be to make better films and better shapes of forms that are given in life.

Having an international voice is not really about whether we speak Persian or any other language.

If I do continue to have the opportunity to work in Iran, that's very much what I'd prefer to do.

Good cinema is what we can believe and bad cinema is what we can't believe. What you see and believe in is very much what I'm interested in.

I've often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it's inside a frame.