Top 100 Satrapi Quotes
#1. We [with Marjane Satrapi] both have very strong personalities, but that's completely normal, because even if you're very well prepared, you never know when you shoot live action.
Vincent Paronnaud
#2. We with [ Marjane Satrapi] always work together on the script which is very important. We even film each other and we start to imagine things so that we are ready, because when you start shooting, it's pretty stressful.
Vincent Paronnaud
#3. There are always different things that can happen and I Marjane Satrapi don't want to yell at other people. It's easier if we yell at each other. We're still friends, so obviously it worked out.
Vincent Paronnaud
#4. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#5. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#7. I like making comics and animation because it takes such a long time. I'm not a runner of the 100 meter. I like marathons. The longer it takes, the better I feel.
Marjane Satrapi
#8. I'm extremely unbearable. You know, I'm narcissistic and at the same time I'm very charming - I think.
Marjane Satrapi
#9. Of course, when you remember your life, you never remember anything in a chronological way. You always have pieces of memories, and some of these memories are full of details and very colorful. Some of them you just see the action and it's completely blank.
Marjane Satrapi
#10. If you're not [Federico] Fellini you might make something very vulgar. Animation made it possible to maintain unity with all these different narratives.
Marjane Satrapi
#11. A cat can never be well-trained because they're too independent.
Marjane Satrapi
#12. Comics are just another medium to express yourself. It's not cinema; it's not literature; it's just something else. It has a specific requirement, which is that images are used to tell the story. There are lots of crappy movies, with guns and action and Arnold Schwarzenegger or whatever.
Marjane Satrapi
#13. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#14. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#15. Here's the problem: the description of the world is always reduced to yes or no, black or white. Superficial stories. Superhero stories. One side is the good one. The other one is evil.
Marjane Satrapi
#16. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#17. The revolution is like a bicycle. When the wheels don't turn, it falls.
Marjane Satrapi
#19. Once again, I arrived at my usual conclusion: one must educate oneself.
Marjane Satrapi
#20. Anything that has a relationship with pleasure, we reject it. Eating, they talk about cholesterol; making love, they talk about AIDS; you talk about smoking, they talk about cancer. It's a very sick society that rejects pleasure.
Marjane Satrapi
#21. I was a child who had a life, who had hopes, and I wished that a bomb would not fall on my head.
Marjane Satrapi
#22. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#23. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#24. I call Iran home because no matter how long I live in France, and despite the fact that I feel also French after all these years, to me the word 'home' has only one meaning: Iran. I suppose it's that way for everyone: Home is the place where one is born and raised.
Marjane Satrapi
#25. For me, drawing is a question of death and life. Every day I draw, I write, I do something.
Marjane Satrapi
#26. I was in love with Darth Vader. He was extremely sexy to me. Once I had almost a sexual dream about Darth Vader. At the moment he was about to pull his helmet off, my husband woke me up and I was so annoyed. I told him, "I was on my way to kiss Darth Vader."
Marjane Satrapi
#27. I believe that am entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists.
Marjane Satrapi
#29. Prosperity consists of two things: tea after a meal, and a cigarette after tea.
Marjane Satrapi
#30. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#32. Anyway, that's how it is! Either they obey the law, or they're expelled!! And make sure they wear their veils correctly ... " - "If hair is as stimulating as you say, then you need to shave your moustache!" My father actually said that.
Marjane Satrapi
#33. Life is absolutely unbearable. And we're going to die.
Marjane Satrapi
#34. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#35. George W.Bush can go and kill thousands of Iraqis every day. By making people believe they are the enemy, and not human beings any more. If evil has an address, a nationality, you can exterminate all of them. This is fascism.
Marjane Satrapi
#36. If today I have to make a political statement, it is, 'I love beauty.' I think beauty makes people better.
Marjane Satrapi
#38. America is a very special place. In this country, you have the best and the worst at the same time. Whatever you can imagine.
Marjane Satrapi
#39. When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.
Marjane Satrapi
#40. The novels have done so well because the drawings are abstract, black-and-white. This adds to the universality of the story. "Persepolis" also has dreamlike moments, and the drawings help maintain cohesion and consistency.
Marjane Satrapi
#41. It's cinematographic to smoke. Imagine Lauren Bacall without a cigarette.
Marjane Satrapi
#43. You have to be narcissistic to be an artist. You have to think you are the centre of the whole thing; otherwise, why do you create? The only thing is to recognise it, and then you make the best of it.
Marjane Satrapi
#44. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#45. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#46. 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?
Marjane Satrapi
#48. That's the story of life - when you start enjoying people, it's always too late.
Marjane Satrapi
#49. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#50. 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 than bitterness and vengeance ... Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself.
Marjane Satrapi
#51. When you make a book or you make a movie, it is almost like hitting on somebody. It's not because you want to seduce people that you will seduce them; you can hit on somebody and it doesn't work. But when you hit on them and it works, then it's really cool.
Marjane Satrapi
#52. Any medium can only live up to the strengths of the people working in it. If it's been used to tell bad or boring stories, it's not a problem with comics; it's a problem with the writers of those comics.
Marjane Satrapi
#53. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#54. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#55. I wasn't made to take orders. My grandmother used to tell me: 'Laws are for idiots.' She was right.
Marjane Satrapi
#56. To tell you the truth, I never wanted to become a moviemaker. It was like I was a cinepihile, and I go, like, three or four times per week to the cinema, and I like to watch films.
Marjane Satrapi
#58. I had learned that you should always shout louder than your aggressor.
Marjane Satrapi
#59. A real love story has to finish bad. That is what I think.
Marjane Satrapi
#60. I became the voice of a generation in a very surprising way, because many Iranians recognize themselves in it. But that is not what I wanted.
Marjane Satrapi
#61. The world is not about Batman and Robin fighting the Joker; things are more complicated than that. And nothing is scarier than the people who try to find easy answers to complicated questions.
Marjane Satrapi
#62. You draw the character from all angles - side, profile, back, etc. so the animator has this character in all the ways it looks like.
Marjane Satrapi
#63. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#64. Would you like to become my wife?"
"Imbecile! What a question. It's my greatest dream!!!
Marjane Satrapi
#65. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#66. You know, they say in France that translation is like a woman: she is either beautiful or faithful.
Marjane Satrapi
#67. I like to make mechanical stuff. Once I make a film I have to do whatever I can make onstage I make it onstage.
Marjane Satrapi
#68. I think the best work of the director is to listen to what all the technicians around him have to say, but then the thing is to take the best decision, what you think is the best. Then, that is the moment where you have to have all the film in your head and imagine how all of that will fit together.
Marjane Satrapi
#69. The things that I do today are the things I did as a child. When I was a child, either I was drawing or I was taking all the kids off my street and I wanted to make shows - I was all the time making! The only thing is, now I know how to do it better, and now they give me money for it.
Marjane Satrapi
#70. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#71. Oh my!! How you've grown. Soon you'll be catching the Lord's balls.
Marjane Satrapi
#72. My mother was the favorite child of her parents. My father was the favorite child of his parents. The result of these two favorite children was me. And I am an only child. So I was convinced that I was the center of the universe.
Marjane Satrapi
#73. If you know a little bit the psychology of human beings, you have to understand that if you say something you should not do, then everybody wants to do it.
Marjane Satrapi
#74. I don't believe in the clash of cultures. The culture is one. The culture is a ring off the same chain. Picasso was very much influenced by the African arts, and he influenced a whole other generation of artists. So everything influences everything.
Marjane Satrapi
#75. I respect humanity. That's my religion. I can't stand these religions that are really businesses. So much money everywhere that's going to buy a really nice house in heaven - or what? I don't get it.
Marjane Satrapi
#76. Life hangs from so slender a thread. Life is but a sigh ...
Marjane Satrapi
#78. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#79. I love the French for their sarcasm, their irony. I love them for their bad moods.
Marjane Satrapi
#80. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#81. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#82. I loved Chiara Mastroianni voice, her talent, her generosity. We rehearsed for two months ... She's a workaholic and perfectionist, like Vincent [ Paronnaud] and myself.
Marjane Satrapi
#83. We found ourselves veiled and separated from our friends.
Marjane Satrapi
#84. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#85. 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 shame to choose one. I think it's better to do both.
Marjane Satrapi
#86. 'The Jungle Book.' It's one of the best animated films ever. I saw it when I was small at a cinema in Tehran.
Marjane Satrapi
#87. Teacher: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Marji: I'll be a prophet.
Marjane Satrapi
#88. I'm not somebody that keeps the thing in her heart. I can get very angry for five minutes, but then it's finished. Once I've yelled, it's over.
Marjane Satrapi
#89. Is religion defending our physical integrity or is it just opposed to fashion?
Marjane Satrapi
#90. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#91. Revolutions just spread blood. Evolution - this is something that changes in the long term.
Marjane Satrapi
#92. Evil is international and the fanatic is international and universal. There is no difference between a Muslim fanatic, a Christian fanatic, even a secular fanatic.
Marjane Satrapi
#93. 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.
Marjane Satrapi
#94. I like to be sad once in a while. You need it for your equilibrium.
Marjane Satrapi
#95. Drawing is the first language of the human being before writing. It's a transcription of how the human being sees reality, not reality itself.
Marjane Satrapi
#97. With animation, if something does not fit, you always have the time to change it. When you make a live-action movie, when your days of shooting are over, they are over forever.
Marjane Satrapi
#98. Hunger eats civilization. The West is not hungry; that's why they can say they're so civilized. Civilization is the biggest bluff!
Marjane Satrapi
#99. You cannot be completely nice. It's impossible. Who is it? Who is the perfect guy? Show him to me! It doesn't exist. And thank god.
Marjane Satrapi
#100. I am very bad at computers. I don't really know how to write email.
Marjane Satrapi
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