“ 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. ”

“ If today I have to make a political statement, it is, 'I love beauty.' I think beauty makes people better. ”

“ If it's a good work of adaptation, the book should remain a book and the film should remain a film, and you should not necessarily read the book to see the film. If you do need that, then that means that it's a failure. That is what I think. ”

“ When you say 'revolution' when you have only men outside, you know that something is going wrong. I'm not like a hardcore feminist, but I think that one of the things that makes the society advanced is equality between men and women. If half of the society is oppressed by the other half, it's not fine. ”

“ My culture comes from everywhere. I'm sick of this notion of nationality, that if you're brought up in the same city or same country you're the same. Even three kids brought up in the same family with the same genes, they are not the same. Just consider a human a human. ”

“ Writing is not for me. I completely lose my sense of humor when I write. I become extremely pathetic, very sensational. Images give me possibilities that I don't have with words. ”

“ Cinema is a world of imagination. ”

“ I like to be sad once in a while. You need it for your equilibrium. ”

“ The real war is not between the West and the East. The real war is between intelligent and stupid people. ”

“ All this misjudgment that we have of each other is based on ignorance. The second you get to travel, you see that human beings, no matter where they come from, they are the same. ”