Top 45 Marjane Satrapi Quotes

You know, the cynicism that is in the politics, it is not for my soul. It makes me – out of me, an extremely bitter, cynical person that I hate to see in the mirror, really.

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

It’s always extremely interesting to speak at colleges. My books are taught in many colleges in America and are part of the educational system, so it’s really important to me. I don’t believe in so many things in life, but something I believe in is education.

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.

I am absolutely not a feminist, I am against stupidity, and if it comes from males or females, it doesn’t change anything. If it means that women and men, they are equal, then OK, certainly I am a feminist.

I have been brought up open-minded. If I didn’t know any people from other countries, I’d think everyone was evil based on news stories. But I know a lot of people, and know that there is no such thing as stark good and evil. Isn’t it possible there is the same amount of evil everywhere?

I hate this word ‘graphic novel.’ It is a term publishing houses have created for the bourgeois so they wouldn’t be ashamed of buying comics… I’m not a graphic novelist. I am a cartoonist and I make comics and I am very happy about it.

The movie business is not about the money. Of course, you need money to make the movie. If you have a small budget, adapt yourself. Having $200 million dollars doesn’t ensure that you’re definitely going to make a good movie. There’s so many examples that prove that.

I have my dark side. You have your dark side. From the second that we have a brain, there are things that are not right – we are human beings with all these illusions and complexes and everything. That’s attractive to me.

It’s true that, in Iran, women have half of the rights men do. And yet 66 per cent of students are women.

If today I have to make a political statement, it is, ‘I love beauty.’ I think beauty makes people better.

I’m not a politician. I don’t know how to solve the problems of the world. But as an artist, I have one duty: to ask questions.

The best thing I ever did in my life was to ask, ‘Do I like everybody?’ And the answer was, ‘No.’ So why should everybody like me? If people are against me, so what? I’m against them too.

I’m not a religious person at all.

My real background was in art studies. At the beginning I was a painter, then I was this graphic designer, then I became an illustrator, then I was a comic artist. But for me it’s a different way of expression, a different field of art. They’re not separated; everything for me is related.

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.

If the majority of people were right, we’d be living in paradise. But we are not living in paradise, we are living in hell. What does it mean? That means the majority of people are wrong. So I never believed what people told me.

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

I think animation is like running a marathon, and making a movie is like a 100 meter sprint. The question is: are you a marathon man or are you a sprinter? I realized that I was more of a sprinter than a marathon man. With a long, long project, I get bored easily.

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.

I think that all stories – if you make movies about zombies and aliens – it has always to do with your personal story. If not directly, it is about your fears, your obsessions, things like that.

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.

I don’t like the word ‘autobiography.’ I rather like the term ‘autofiction.’ The second you make a script out of the story of your life, it becomes fictional. Of course, the truth is never far. But the story is created out of it.

I took three years of karate because of Bruce Lee, you know. I was a green belt.

I never wanted to make a graphic novel. As soon as you become a ‘writer,’ you have to be intelligent all the time… I like the fact that I have the right once in a while to say silly things.

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.

As a director, you have to understand what is happening – if I don’t understand it, you can’t make changes.

I don’t like ‘graphic novel.’ It’s a word that publishers created for the bourgeois to read comics without feeling bad. Comics is just a way of narrating – it’s just a media type.

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’m a very individualistic person. That is why I don’t belong to any political party or anything. I really believe in justice and freedom.

That’s the story of life – when you start enjoying people, it’s always too late.

A Muslim fanatic and a Christian fanatic, a Jewish fanatic, a secular fanatic, an atheist fanatic, a communist fanatic – all of them are the same. The thinking that, ‘If you don’t think like me, that if you are not with me, then you are against me;’ this is something to condemn.

The most exciting time is when I think of an idea and how I imagine I can make it. It would be wonderful if there was a projector inside my eye that and it could just put the idea on the screen for people to see.

People are so afraid to say the word ‘comic’. It makes you think of a grown man with pimples, a ponytail and a big belly. Change it to ‘graphic novel’ and that disappears.

I had two major activities as a child. I was trying to put on shows with kids in my street, or I was drawing. Actually, what I’m doing now is exactly what I was doing then. Either I’m drawing, or I’m gathering people for a common project. The only difference is that now they are paying me for that.

Smoking kills you, but life kills you, and if you don’t want to die, go into a freezer when you are born and nothing will happen to you.

Americans think cinema is about storytelling; I don’t believe that. I think it’s a language and everyone has to find their own way of speaking. It’s not so much what you say as the way you say it.

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

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’m not a politician because I’m an artist. Politicians have a very easy answer for a very complicated question. I have a very complicated question for what you consider very easy situations.

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

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

America is a very special place. In this country, you have the best and the worst at the same time. Whatever you can imagine.

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.

I think the only universal thing is one individual. If you talk about a country or a nation or a culture, it’s so vague. I mean what is a nation? A nation is full of nice and bad and long and tall and short and thin people. It’s not like everybody is the same.