I wanted to be left alone to live my life, so it was very easy for people to pretend that they were me.

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.

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.

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.

Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process

I can install toilets. I know all about the wax ring. I can tile floors. I'm learning how to do basic wiring.

Writing is an outlet, but it’s not an outlet of escape. People keep a journal when they want to escape. I write to rub my face in it.

A disciple having asked for a definition of charity, the Master said LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

Asking me to describe my son is like asking me to hold the ocean in a paper cup

Do we really need more romance attached to the act of blowing people away?

You don't have to be like everybody else or do things like everybody else. God created you to be a unique individual, and He wants you to be free to be who He made you to be.

Clay is moulded to make a vessel, but the utility of the vessel lies in the space where there is nothing. . . . Thus, taking advantage of what is, we recognize the utility of what is not.

A basic principle of modern state capitalism is that costs and risks are socialized to the extent possible, while profit is privatized.

The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole.