You have to be narcissistic to be an artist. You have to think you are the centre of the whole thing otherwise why do you create? The only thing is to recognise it, and then you make the best of it.

I don't like the word 'autobiography.' I rather like the term 'autofiction.' The second you make a script out of the story of your life, it becomes fictional. Of course, the truth is never far. But the story is created out of it.

I don't want to quit smoking. I am convinced that if I quit smoking, the world would go to hell.

When you make a book or you make a movie, it is almost like hitting on somebody. It's not because you want to seduce people that you will seduce them; you can hit on somebody and it doesn't work. But when you hit on them and it works, then it's really cool.

The novels have done so well because the drawings are abstract, black-and-white. This adds to the universality of the story. "Persepolis" also has dreamlike moments, and the drawings help maintain cohesion and consistency.

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.

If you know a little bit the psychology of human beings, you have to understand that if you say something you should not do, then everybody wants to do it.