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."

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."

Of course, I didn't become an architect, but later on in Iran, I had a lot of contact and discussions with architects because Iran was developing, and I felt we shouldn't destroy the past and copy completely the West, which is the problem in developing countries.

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

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

You have to judge everybody on balance, all the positives and all the negatives. In the life of my husband, I think the positives outweigh the negatives.

I hope in the end there will be a solution for the world, because we have advanced in so many ways, and still the world has so many different problems.