I'm a very individualistic person. That is why I don't belong to any political party or anything. I really believe in justice and freedom.

My mother was the favorite child of her parents. My father was the favorite child of his parents. The result of these two favorite children was me. And I am an only child. So I was convinced that I was the center of the universe.

I never wanted to make a graphic novel. As soon as you become a 'writer,' you have to be intelligent all the time... I like the fact that I have the right once in a while to say silly things.

My real background was in art studies. At the beginning I was a painter, then I was this graphic designer, then I became an illustrator, then I was a comic artist. But for me it's a different way of expression, a different field of art. They're not separated; everything for me is related.

I am very bad at computers. I don't really know how to write email.

When you say 'revolution' when you have only men outside, you know that something is going wrong. I'm not like a hardcore feminist, but I think that one of the things that makes the society advanced is equality between men and women. If half of the society is oppressed by the other half, it's not fine.

I love the French for their sarcasm, their irony. I love them for their bad moods.

I don't consider myself as a feminist but more a humanist.

The way that you remember your life, it's never linear. You have flashes of different moments of your life, and the flashes aren't equal; they have different styles.

I call Iran home because no matter how long I live in France, and despite the fact that I feel also French after all these years, to me the word 'home' has only one meaning: Iran. I suppose it's that way for everyone: Home is the place where one is born and raised.

America is a very special place. In this country, you have the best and the worst at the same time. Whatever you can imagine.

This clash of the culture, East and the West, us and them, Muslim and Christian, does not exist.

I don't think of myself as a rebel; I just say what I think.

All this misjudgment that we have of each other is based on ignorance. The second you get to travel, you see that human beings, no matter where they come from, they are the same.

I had two major activities as a child. I was trying to put on shows with kids in my street, or I was drawing. Actually, what I'm doing now is exactly what I was doing then. Either I'm drawing, or I'm gathering people for a common project. The only difference is that now they are paying me for that.

I am absolutely not a feminist, I am against stupidity, and if it comes from males or females, it doesn't change anything. If it means that women and men, they are equal, then OK, certainly I am a feminist.

The first writing of the human being was drawing, not writing.

I don't want to quit smoking. I am convinced that if I quit smoking, the world would go to hell.

You have to be narcissistic to be an artist. You have to think you are the centre of the whole thing; otherwise, why do you create? The only thing is to recognise it, and then you make the best of it.

It's always extremely interesting to speak at colleges. My books are taught in many colleges in America and are part of the educational system, so it's really important to me. I don't believe in so many things in life, but something I believe in is education.

Anything that has a relationship with pleasure, we reject it. Eating, they talk about cholesterol; making love, they talk about AIDS; you talk about smoking, they talk about cancer. It's a very sick society that rejects pleasure.

My culture comes from everywhere. I'm sick of this notion of nationality, that if you're brought up in the same city or same country you're the same. Even three kids brought up in the same family with the same genes, they are not the same. Just consider a human a human.

I don't like 'graphic novel.' It's a word that publishers created for the bourgeois to read comics without feeling bad. Comics is just a way of narrating - it's just a media type.

People are so afraid to say the word 'comic'. It makes you think of a grown man with pimples, a ponytail and a big belly. Change it to 'graphic novel' and that disappears.