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.
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.
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.
I had so many professions before. I didn’t want to do this particularly. It just happened.
Racism is not nearly as important as poverty. That’s the same around the world. What look like ethnic problems are really economic issues. If you look closely at all these conflicts around the world, they come down to poverty and economics and resources. The more poverty, the worse the war.
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.
A real love story has to finish bad. That is what I think.
There are things that I love in Iranian cinema and things that I don’t. In Iranian cinema, you have to use metaphor because you are living under a dictatorship.
But violence is news, to a certain extent, and people don’t want complicated news. Because as soon as you realize things are complicated, your life becomes more complicated.
The way that you remember your life, it’s never linear. You have flashes of different moments of your life, and the flashes aren’t equal; they have different styles.
For me, drawing is a question of death and life. Every day I draw, I write, I do something.
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.
That’s the story of life – when you start enjoying people, it’s always too late.
America is a very special place. In this country, you have the best and the worst at the same time. Whatever you can imagine.
Life is complex. You don’t have any person who is nice from the beginning until the end. You don’t always have the notion of redemption. The bad people don’t always pay.
Maybe the biggest problem is that there’s no empathy. Nobody puts themselves in the place of others. Everyone thinks they are the only one to suffer. Or that they’re the only ones who like ice cream or take their kids on vacation.
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.
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.
Words also are filters. They have to be translated. Even in the original language, there is interpretation and some ambiguity. If there’s a cultural difference between the writer and the reader, that might come out in words. But with pictures, there’s more efficiency.
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.