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.

I was a child who had a life, who had hopes, and I wished that a bomb would not fall on my head.

A real love story has to finish bad. That is what I think.

The most exciting time is when I think of an idea and how I imagine I can make it. It would be wonderful if there was a projector inside my eye that and it could just put the idea on the screen for people to see.

I wasn't made to take orders. My grandmother used to tell me: 'Laws are for idiots.' She was right.

This clash of the culture, East and the West, us and them, Muslim and Christian, does not exist.

You know, the cynicism that is in the politics, it is not for my soul. It makes me - out of me, an extremely bitter, cynical person that I hate to see in the mirror, really.