These days, more than any other time, we are worried about our personal life, our private life. When we talk about our private life, it means our home, our body even. It seems that when we want to have calmness in this world, we make a wall around us. This gives us a very calm environment, and when we feel that somebody is intruding into that, it makes us very angry and we feel we have to do something about it.

It was important to me to make a film where I don't show the past but where the spectators can see the past.

I'm always careful about the thing I'm writing to make sure a viewer can imagine it happening to themselves.

Poetry, especially traditional Iranian poetry, is very good at looking at things from a number of different angles simultaneously.

I really think that people who want to think more serious have to go and watch theater. Theater is a very sterilized art form. Not as much as music, but very close to music.

One must never tell a child what it is they should display acting.

Each person makes their own choice, but my spirit is meant to stay in Iran, especially with the work that I do, and with the emotional connection I have with the country - with all its difficulties, this is why I stay.