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.

Fanaticism exists in every religion, whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.

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

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

I wanted to preserve the old buildings, not to destroy them and build something new.

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.

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.