The best thing I ever did in my life was to ask, 'Do I like everybody?' And the answer was, 'No.' So why should everybody like me? If people are against me, so what? I'm against them too.

Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw, it seems a shame to choose one. I think it's better to do both.

Human beings have a lot of problems identifying themselves with other human beings who don't resemble them exactly. But there's something about drawing that means that anyone can identify to a drawing. I mean, people can identify themselves with Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.

The real war is not between the West and the East. The real war is between intelligent and stupid people.

It's true that, in Iran, women have half of the rights men do. And yet 66 per cent of students are women.

Life is complex. You don't have any person who is nice from the beginning until the end. You don't always have the notion of redemption. The bad people don't always pay.

All big changes of the world come from words.

It's cinematographic to smoke. Imagine Lauren Bacall without a cigarette.

For me, drawing is a question of death and life. Every day I draw, I write, I do something.