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.
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.
Adaptation of books is never a success. When the author wants to make it, it's even worse.
The language in a comic book or a graphic novel and the cinematographic language are really not the same language. They are false brother and sister. It's not at all the same.
Revolutions just spread blood. Evolution - this is something that changes in the long term. Because history is long term. But today, we don't talk about history. The past is two weeks ago, and the future is two weeks after.
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.
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."
I wanted to do my artistic work, and in Iran you have censorship. It was difficult for me to do the work I wanted to do.
In all the dictatorships, there's such a non-understanding of what human beings are. I mean, if you believe in the Bible, you have the story of Adam and Eve and God tells them, "Do whatever you want. The only thing you shouldn't do is eat the apple." What do they do the first thing? They eat the apple. So 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.
I'd heard so many stupidities about my country since I left Iran. People had watched this stupid movie Not Without My Daughter [in which Sally Field plays an American who rescues her daughter from her estranged in-laws in Iran]; I heard so many things like that. I did not make Persepolis for Iranians. It was my answer to the rest of the world, to say, "Let me give you another point of view."
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.
Today, we don't talk about history. The past is two weeks ago, and the future is two weeks after.
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.
I'm extremely unbearable. You know, I'm narcissistic and at the same time I'm very charming - I think.
With live-action I think we'd have lost the universal appeal of the Persepolis story. With live-action, it would have turned into a story of 'the Other' - people living in a distant land who don't look like us. It might have been exotic, but also a "Third-World" story.
The most natural thing for us is drawing. The characters [in Persepolis] are hand drawn. We're not technical people. We don't know how to type.
If you're not [Federico] Fellini you might make something very vulgar. Animation made it possible to maintain unity with all these different narratives.
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.
