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.

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.

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.

At each step there is a small moment of transformation that cannot be overlooked or rushed. And these moments should not be, because they are beautiful.

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. ... Choose science.

I want there to be a level of respect between everybody.

Making love to a fat woman sure is a treat, because I'm here to tell you that meat hold heat.

Train our children to love God.

The strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don't want to.

Whoever does not hold his tongue cannot understand his deen.

Productivity growth, however it occurs, has a disruptive side to it. In the short term, most things that contribute to productivity growth are very painful.

We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.

Individualism is a denial that life has any meaning except the gratification of the ego; in politics it must end in anarchy. It is not possible for one man to be both Christian and Individualist.