It's normal that countries work for their own benefit, political and economic.

I remember I went to an exhibition somewhere and one of the artists, an Iranian lady, said, "I wish we had somewhere that our paintings would stay forever." So this idea came to me. I said, "She's right, we should have a place to keep them, and not only Iranian art works, but also of foreign artists."

You cannot expect a foreign country to be more Catholic than the pope for you.

There are many Iranians working at NASA. One of the engineers involved with the spaceship that went to Mars is an Iranian.

In Iran, as in all developing countries, they wanted to copy the outside world, without knowing what was good for our own country.

I always want to remain positive. In our long history, Iran has been invaded by so many other countries and despite it all, the Iranian identity has survived. People are very courageous, especially the women, who are braver than the men.

I was never interested in money. I always looked down on it. But now that I have less money, I see that without money, you cannot do much. Everything in the end is about money.