Whether this tale be true or false, none can tell, for none were there to witness it themselves.
I really didn’t know what to think about the veil. Deep down I was very religious but as a family we were very modern and avant-garde. I was born with religion. At the age of six I was already sure I was the last prophet. This was few years before the revolution.
Well, I would have much preferred to have had a normal childhood. I would have loved it if my greatest dilemma, at 14, was whether to go to Benetton for my pullovers. I would have preferred not to have cried all the tears I have cried.
I’m someone who lived in a war for five years. I received bombs on my head every day of my childhood. Did that stop me from living? Did that stop me from laughing?
In every religion, you find the same extremists.
I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn’t even know anymore why I was living.
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.
Teacher: What do you want to be when you grow up? Marji: I’ll be a prophet.
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.
As a director, you have to understand what is happening – if I don’t understand it, you can’t make changes.
Cinema is a world of imagination.
For me, who loves to draw and who loves to write and cannot choose between one or the other, the comic is the best form.
I was a child who had a life, who had hopes, and I wished that a bomb would not fall on my head.
I am very bad at computers. I don’t really know how to write email.
I love the French for their sarcasm, their irony. I love them for their bad moods.
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.
Not everybody loves their children. If that was a fact, all the children would be happy and they would make happy adults. Instead, we have lots of miserable children that later became miserable adults. This is a fact. We cannot change that.
I took three years of karate because of Bruce Lee, you know. I was a green belt.
It’s cinematographic to smoke. Imagine Lauren Bacall without a cigarette.
It’s true that, in Iran, women have half of the rights men do. And yet 66 per cent of students are women.