I realized that I was more of a sprinter than a marathon man. With a long, long project, I get bored easily.

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

We found ourselves veiled and separated from our friends.

There's this scene in "The Night of the Hunter" when the kids are downstairs, and you have the feeling that they're both in a room and at the same time it looks remote. And you wonder, How can you give the effect of both "inside" and "outside" at the same time. And you realize, by watching it many times, that around the scene there's this black edging.

I wrote the plot [for the Persepolis ]and Vincent [Paronnaud] and I wrote and discussed the shooting of the script. Vincent then took care of the production design, the actual shooting, and what was going on within each scene. It's very difficult, though, to draw a line between who did what. Because Vincent would say something, and I would add something, and at the end you have this film, yet no clear idea of who did what.

Today, we don't talk about history. The past is two weeks ago, and the future is two weeks after.

Fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.