352 Quotes by Marjane Satrapi

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.

I rushed to the living room to protect myself from I don’t know what, behind my best friend, a book.

Guns may shoot and knives may carve, but we won’t wear your silly scarves!

If it’s a good work of adaptation, the book should remain a book and the film should remain a film, and you should not necessarily read the book to see the film. If you do need that, then that means that it’s a failure. That is what I think.

I wanted to die. Where were my parents to take me in their arms, to reassure me?

I’m happy to see you so well-settled here. Now you must make an effort, you must become somebody. I don’t care what you do later, only try to be the best. Even if you become a cabaret dance, better that you dance at the lido than in a hole in the wall.

What do you want me to say, sir? That I’m the vegetable that I refused to become, that I’m so disappointed in myself that I can no longee look at myself in the mirror? That I hate myself?

Words also are filters. They have to be translated. Even in the original language, there is interpretation and some ambiguity. If there’s a cultural difference between the writer and the reader, that might come out in words. But with pictures, there’s more efficiency.

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.