Because there is so little room for expression otherwise, a lot of people love cinema because they find it a way of expressing themselves.

Rumi, who is one of the greatest Persian poets, said that the truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.

There's an 800 kilometer border between Iran and Afghanistan.

The Buddhas had to be destroyed by the Taliban to get the world thinking about Afghanistan.

I wanted to be left alone to live my life, so it was very easy for people to pretend that they were me.

Afghan society is very complex, and Afghanistan has a very complex culture. Part of the reason it has remained unknown is because of this complexity.

I'm not playing myself. It's a symbolic situation, where I want to introduce a fascist behind the table. I couldn't have had anybody else do that; for it to be successful, I had to do it myself.