Marjane Satrapi Quotes

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Marjane Satrapi

Profession : Artist

Birth : November 22, 1969

I hate this word 'graphic novel.' It is a term publishing houses have created for the bourgeois so they wouldn't be ashamed of buying comics... I'm not a graphic novelist. I am a cartoonist and I make comics and I am very happy about it.

Marjane Satrapi

I never wanted to make a graphic novel. As soon as you become a 'writer,' you have to be intelligent all the time... I like the fact that I have the right once in a while to say silly things.

Marjane Satrapi

A Muslim fanatic and a Christian fanatic, a Jewish fanatic, a secular fanatic, an atheist fanatic, a communist fanatic - all of them are the same. The thinking that, 'If you don't think like me, that if you are not with me, then you are against me;' this is something to condemn.

Marjane Satrapi

I had this fantasy that in a democracy the government was the population. So I came to America and got a big slap in my face... Americans were not what I thought. I thought I was going to see bastards and I saw nice people, very friendly to me.

Marjane Satrapi

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

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

You know, comics were created at the same time as the cinema. And the cinema very quickly became a major art. Cartooning didn't become a major art. There's a reason for that. People don't know how to deal with drawings.

Marjane Satrapi

I don't consider myself as a feminist but more a humanist.

Marjane Satrapi

'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

As a director, you have to understand what is happening - if I don't understand it, you can't make changes.

Marjane Satrapi

In the West, people don't have any real problems. It's all based on bad conscience, a very Christian notion. I don't have any bad conscience. If there's a God that created us, if I am bad, it's his fault.

Marjane Satrapi

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.

Marjane Satrapi

I love the French for their sarcasm, their irony. I love them for their bad moods.

Marjane Satrapi

I think animation is like running a marathon, and making a movie is like a 100 meter sprint. The question is: are you a marathon man or are you a sprinter? I realized that I was more of a sprinter than a marathon man. With a long, long project, I get bored easily.

Marjane Satrapi

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

It's cinematographic to smoke. Imagine Lauren Bacall without a cigarette.

Marjane Satrapi

If today I have to make a political statement, it is, 'I love beauty.' I think beauty makes people better.

Marjane Satrapi

I don't think that I have ever been rebellious. The thing is that I don't believe in people - what people tell me. I have to accept it in my own brain first. I don't listen to anyone, never.

Marjane Satrapi

This clash of the culture, East and the West, us and them, Muslim and Christian, does not exist.

Marjane Satrapi

Human beings have a lot of problems identifying themselves with other human beings who don't resemble them exactly. But there's something about drawing that means that anyone can identify to a drawing. I mean, people can identify themselves with Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.

Marjane Satrapi