Abbas Kiarostami Quotes

I've often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it's inside a frame.

Religion works on some people but not on everyone, because it says, 'Stop thinking and accept what I tell you.' That's not valid for people who want to think and reflect.

Cinema seats make people lazy. They expect to be given all the information. But for me, question marks are the punctuation of life.

A movie is about human beings, about humanity.

In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.

Film is very much a universal and common voice, and we can't limit it to one particular culture.

Good cinema is what we can believe and bad cinema is what we can't believe. What you see and believe in is very much what I'm interested in.

My way of expression is full of complications and mystery because that's my perception of life.

I would be too selfish if I said everyone should see my movies more than once. To say that would mean I'm just marketing my work!

I spend a lot of time doing carpentry. Sometimes there is nothing that gives me the contentment that sawing a piece of wood does.

I think it was [Jean-Luc] Godard who said that life is nothing but a bad copy of film, but then our ambition must be to make better films and better shapes of forms that are given in life.

I have no advice for anyone on how to live.

We are nothing but a link between our culture and what we can actually produce.

Cinema gives you the opportunity to be both a grandparent and a grandchild whereas in life you cannot be both at the same time.

I never reflect or convey that which I have not experienced myself.

In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture.

It's true that the best way of knowing yourself is to put yourself into different situations.

I never really learned photography.

In my mind, there isn't as much of a distinction between documentary and fiction as there is between a good movie and a bad one.

The day we run out of petrol is the day Iran will be free.

I think being someone in love is so hard to define, so temporary, because retrospectively we often deny the state in which we were in love.

Everybody knows that I am not usually patient enough to actually sit down and watch one of my own films from the beginning to the end - I never do.

I thought that I had been asked every kind of question possible.

I do believe in [Robert] Bresson's method of creation through omission, not through addition.

A work of art doesn't exist outside the perception of the audience.

Anything I've not experienced I do not look to for a subject. I have to feel it.

I didn't just see myself as a film director here [in Life And Nothing More], but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death.

I was mentioning with the digital camera, maybe this new fashion of filmmaking gives a closer look of what life may be like. But it's still nothing but a copy.

It's not so much a question of whether we've shot it through 35mm or digital video; what is important is whether the audience accepts it as real.

I believe there's only good cinema and bad cinema.

I really enjoy listening to stories. I remember them and keep them in my mind.

I wasn't searching for a common denominator - I started wondering about the challenge of working in other cultures. What I reached was the sudden acknowledgment of the universal aspect of filmmaking.

In my opinion the man looks at the relationship in a more bitter fashion and the woman still holds great hopes.

As soon as people enter a theater they must become moron consumers who must be fed information.

The experience of life teaches us that being like someone in love is more real, because everything is uncertain.

Close-Up is a very particular film in my oeuvre. It's a film that was made in a very particular way; mainly because I didn't really have the time to think about how to go about making the film.

My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated.

There were years when Hitchcock was like a master to me, but now I think he's so artificial. I can watch films and say how technically beautiful they are, but I'm not impressed by any technicality.

Children are very strong and independent characters and can come up with more interesting things than Marlon Brando, and it's sometimes very difficult to direct or order them to do something.

I think life is so difficult to catch, it's so furtive, that a copy, a film, can in no way catch it and represent it.

Directors don't always create, they can also destroy with too many demands.

I think, just as footballers play better at home, maybe film-makers, too, create better at home, even though the rules of football are the same wherever you go.

I think that if you're a digital thinker, you can use a digital camera.

Whether you consider me a master filmmaker or not, I do it with my intuition and my vision, my experience as a storyteller.

I'm still very grateful to digital cameras in general, but I didn't have this feeling with the RED one.

If you are a businessman or a politician in Iran, you can get a visa as quickly as you ask for it.

I am still very surprised that I managed to make that film [Close Up]. When I actually look back on that film, I really feel that I was not the director but instead just a member of the audience.

The film [Close Up] made itself, to a large extent. The characters involved were very real, I wasn't directing the actors so much as being directed by them. So it was a very particular film.

Unfortunately, cinema critics are very few in America, 400-500 people, but there are more critics of Iran.

In order to be able to cooperate with a child, you have to come down to below their level in order to communicate with them. Actors are also like children.