208 Quotes by Abbas Kiarostami
"I don't like reverse-angle shots - I find them very fake and very untruthful to the viewer."
"All the different nations in the world, despite their differences of appearance and religion and language and way of life, still have one thing in common, and that is what's inside of all of us. If we X-rayed the insides of different human beings, we wouldn't be able to tell from those X-rays what the person's language or background or race is."
"This [the earthquake] was a very big influence on me, and the issue of life and death from then on does recur in my films."
"I really haven't seen The Report in a long time. I don't have a copy, but I'll have to see it again. I think it would be good to put both these men next to each other."
"People have curiosity, they have intelligence, they have interest in understanding their peers. But producers and directors of cinema have decided that the seats in the theaters have been made to transform people's minds to lazy minds."
"I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theater. Some films have made me doze off in the theater, but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks."
"Having an international voice is not really about whether we speak Persian or any other language."
"I think I'm no different to my friends who are doctors or businessmen or architects - we all started watching films of the golden age together. But whether I'm making films or writing poetry or doing photography, it's very much rooted in my sense of unease. And that's really where everything goes back to."
"Whether you consider me a master filmmaker or not, I do it with my intuition and my vision, my experience as a storyteller."