If it's a good work of adaptation, the book should remain a book and the film should remain a film, and you should not necessarily read the book to see the film. If you do need that, then that means that it's a failure. That is what I think.

It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If evil has a geographical place, and if the evil has a name, that is the beginning of fascism. Real life is not this way. You have fanatics and narrow-minded people everywhere.

America is a very special place. In this country, you have the best and the worst at the same time. Whatever you can imagine.

I'm not a very good financing person. I don't even know how much money I have in my bank account. I never have opened one single envelope from the bank - they freak me out.

The Germans sell chemical weapons to Iran and Iraq. The wounded are then sent to Germany to be treated. Veritable human guinea pigs.

I don't watch many comic-book movies. But I loved 'Sin City.'

I'd heard so many stupidities about my country since I left Iran. People had watched this stupid movie Not Without My Daughter [in which Sally Field plays an American who rescues her daughter from her estranged in-laws in Iran]; I heard so many things like that. I did not make Persepolis for Iranians. It was my answer to the rest of the world, to say, "Let me give you another point of view."