Afghan society is very complex, and Afghanistan has a very complex culture. Part of the reason it has remained unknown is because of this complexity.

Because there is so little room for expression otherwise, a lot of people love cinema because they find it a way of expressing themselves.

From my films, you can at least learn about Iran, you can get a sense of the history and the society. But no such films have been made about Afghanistan, so you really can't know much about it.

I was in jail four and a half years. When I came out, I continued the same struggle against injustice, but instead of using weapons, I began to use art and cinema.

The Buddhas had to be destroyed by the Taliban to get the world thinking about Afghanistan.

I myself had to grow a longer beard and Afghan clothes. I was in danger of being kidnapped by smugglers, though I didn't know it at the time.

Usually people like to categorise artists. With my films, I categorise people: if I know which one of my movies you like, I can tell which kind of a person you are.

Do you know that every day, 10 people in Afghanistan are injured by landmines? It will continue for the next 50 years, because the country has the largest number of landmines in the world.

But also, there are no films being made about Afghanistan.

There's an 800 kilometer border between Iran and Afghanistan.

I'm not playing myself. It's a symbolic situation, where I want to introduce a fascist behind the table. I couldn't have had anybody else do that; for it to be successful, I had to do it myself.

Let me tell you something about dying: it's not as bad as they says.it's the coming-back-to-life part that hurts.

I don't have a thing, " Tengo said, "except my soul.""Sounds like a job for Mephistopheles, " she said.

The reward of a work is to have produced it

I learned not to pray about my strategies, but to make prayer the strategy.

When things don't happen, people get Sick. They see time Tick and they want it Quick. They forget that Success happens brick by brick.

It doesn't matter where you come from or who you think you are, we're all human beings with beating hearts.

I am spending much more than I'm making on these cars and these vacations, is that too much information?

I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living.

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

Vicarious living is only slightly less impossible than vicarious eating.