Marjane Satrapi

“I want to be justice, love and the wrath of God all in one.”

“In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse t...”

“I had learned that you should always shout louder than your aggressor.”

“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...”

“I have always thought that if women's hair posed so many problems, God would certainly have made us bald.”

“Where are you going on vacation?” “Nowhere. I’m going to read. I love reading.”

“It's not like since I make comics I only read comics and since I make movies I will only go out and watch movies. Any kind of artistic expression interests me; it goes from literature to mus...”

“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 se...”

“You know, comics were created at the same time as the cinema. And the cinema very quickly became a major art. Cartooning didn't become a major art. There's a reason for that. People don't kn...”

“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 every...”

“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...”

“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...”

“You know, I'm a really individualistic person. I'm extremely narcissistic and egocentric, too. So I have one life, and I have to live it the way I want.”

“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.”

“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 scr...”

“It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If evil has a geographical place, and if the evil...”

“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.”

“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.”

“My point of view when I make a book or I make a movie is to see the humanistic point of view. The point of view of the daily life of normal people.”

“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 differen...”