I think with pictures; I'm a very lousy writer. If I write without pictures, I become this pathetic chick sitting somewhere trying to be interesting.

Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw, it seems a shame to choose one. I think it's better to do both.

There are things that I love in Iranian cinema and things that I don't. In Iranian cinema, you have to use metaphor because you are living under a dictatorship.

With live-action I think we'd have lost the universal appeal of the Persepolis story. With live-action, it would have turned into a story of 'the Other' - people living in a distant land who don't look like us. It might have been exotic, but also a "Third-World" story.

It's cinematographic to smoke. Imagine Lauren Bacall without a cigarette.

Start [the movie] in color. Color is always attributed as fun, and black and white is very sad.

The first writing of the human being was drawing, not writing.