352 Quotes by Marjane Satrapi

I wanted to make a real love story with a bad ending, because a love story that ends good is the life of everyone. I always say to people, You know, if Romeo and Juliet got married, nobody would care about them. Imagine Romeo and Juliet, six kids yelling, mama, mama, papa, papa.

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.

My mother always told me I had to do 100 times better than a man. I had to work hard at maths, and learn four languages.

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.

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.

All big changes of the world come from words.

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.

Imagine if I cannot stand someone and every day he is here in my face, then I cannot work. Then, the whole time, I am thinking "I hate him, I hate him." But if I love him or I love her, then I can do anything, then I am comfortable. That's why it's so important to be surrounded by people that you really like.

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.