Marjane Satrapi Quotes

If you have a little sensibility or a heart, you have all the reason to be depressed once in a while. But the depression is like a motor for creation. I need a little bit of depression, a bit of acid in my stomach, to be able to create. When I'm happy, I just want to dance.

You cannot be completely nice. It's impossible. Who is it? Who is the perfect guy? Show him to me! It doesn't exist. And thank god.

Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw, it seems a shame to choose one. I think it's better to do both.

With animation, if something does not fit, you always have the time to change it. When you make a live-action movie, when your days of shooting are over, they are over forever.

I don't consider myself as a feminist but more a humanist.

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

I had this fantasy that in a democracy the government was the population. So I came to America and got a big slap in my face... Americans were not what I thought. I thought I was going to see bastards and I saw nice people, very friendly to me.

Drawing is the first language of the human being before writing. It's a transcription of how the human being sees reality, not reality itself.

I almost don't know how to write an email.

Adaptation of books is never a success. When the author wants to make it, it's even worse.

The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself: Are my trousers long enough?' Is my veil in place?' Can my make-up be seen?' Are they going to whip me?' No longer asks herself: Where is my freedom of thought?' Where is my freedom of speech?' My life, is it livable?' What's going on in the political prisons?

I'm very open and never write what I'm going to say. Speeches bore everybody else. I have to freestyle. Every time, from one program to another, everything changes and I improvise.

I wanted to do my artistic work, and in Iran you have censorship. It was difficult for me to do the work I wanted to do.

If people are given the chance to experience life in more than one country, they will hate a little less. It's not a miracle potion, but little by little you can solve problems in the basement of a country, not on the surface.

Start [the movie] in color. Color is always attributed as fun, and black and white is very sad.

I don't think of myself as a rebel; I just say what I think.

If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it's that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.

I chose the actors that I was in love with. I cannot work with people that I don't personally like a lot. They can be the best actor in the world, but if the first contact is not good, if I don't fall in love with them, then I don't want to work with them. It's impossible.

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

You hear people saying, 'Oh I'm so tired, I've had enough of Cannes.' How can you have enough of Cannes? It's just the best place to be, like a fairytale.

I think with pictures; I'm a very lousy writer. If I write without pictures, I become this pathetic chick sitting somewhere trying to be interesting.

Human beings have a lot of problems identifying themselves with other human beings who don't resemble them exactly. But there's something about drawing that means that anyone can identify to a drawing. I mean, people can identify themselves with Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.

I like to make mechanical stuff. Once I make a film I have to do whatever I can make onstage I make it onstage.

I am very bad at computers. I don't really know how to write email.