One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world.

Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.

What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

As if there could be true stories: things happen in one way, and we retell them in the opposite way.

If I relegate impossible Salvation to the prop room, what remains? A whole man, composed of all men and as good as all of them and no better than any.

I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be that of Shariati's.