War always takes you by surprise.

You are putting yourself in serious danger...' I think that I preferred to put myself in serious danger rather than confront my shame. My shame at not having become someone, the shame of not having made my parents proud after all the sacrifices they had made for me. The shame of having become a mediocre nihilist.

Comics are just another medium to express yourself. It's not cinema; it's not literature; it's just something else. It has a specific requirement, which is that images are used to tell the story. There are lots of crappy movies, with guns and action and Arnold Schwarzenegger or whatever.

Death, torture and prison are part of daily life for the youth of Iran. They are not like us, my friends and I at their age; they are not scared. They are not what we were. They hold hands and scream: “Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid! We are together!” They understand that no one will give them their rights; they must go get them.

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

Life is complex. You don't have any person who is nice from the beginning until the end. You don't always have the notion of redemption. The bad people don't always pay.

For me, drawing is a question of death and life. Every day I draw, I write, I do something.