Being political is an integral part of being Iranian. Our lives are defined by politics.

Art is our weapon. Culture is a form of resistance.

I find that through the study of women, you get to the heart - the truth - of the culture.

Every Iranian artist, in one form or another, is political. Politics have defined our lives.

In this Western world that we have, culture risks being [only] a form of entertainment.

Art is no crime. It's every artist's responsibility to make art that is meaningful

Poets use metaphors and symbolism to construct images. I construct my images in the same way, except that I am using a different form.

Beautiful woman wrapped in chadors, with huge machine guns in their hands. Brilliant, shocking, amazingly contradictory images. They compelled me to deeply investigate these ideas.

To me, editing is not something you can do in a rush because the artists themselves are not always their own best editors. Time is absolutely everything.

Nature has the most powerfully healing effect.

My mother is my last point of security in relation to my past, and if that breaks, I will not ever have that type of pure love or pure attachment.

I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.

Prayer puts God in the position He deserves - that of King, Governor, Benign Controller, Possessor, Lord, and Master.

I was often very, incredibly naughty, and if I didn't come home at tea time I used to be sent to bed without any dinner. But people used to bring me things: I was better fed in bed.

It seems that I have spent my entire life trying to make life more rational and that it was all wasted effort.

Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.

Comedy, although it is not one of the fine arts - it's a vulgar art, it's one of the people's arts, it's the spoken word, the writing that goes into it is an art form - it's certainly artistry.

Tories never actually talk about getting rid of their leader, then suddenly there us a flash of steel between he shoulder-blades and rigormortis sets in.

There is something haunting in the light of the moon.

I'd love to do radio plays. I think that one should be open to everything and shouldn't limit oneself.

In my new life, no room for a lost boy.