None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.

Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.

None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.

When I walked down the streets, I asked myself, are these my people?, is this my hometown, am I who I am?

The stories from Iran's present and past are reminders that freedom, democracy and human rights, or fundamentalism, fascism and terrorism are not geographically and culturally determined, but universal.

Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.

It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.