I always thought that I was a terrible writer. And I started to write songs. And I started to like what I was writing. I think it's a new way for me to express things that are closer to myself than when I play a role because, of course, it's really not me.

I cry watching 'Camille' with Greta Garbo. I have to say that - while it might sound weird - it will be weird, but there is one movie I always laugh in, and at the end of the movie, I always cry, and I saw it, like, 10 times. It's 'Step Brothers.'

Toni Collette is one of my favorite. I have a passion for actresses. The list is going to be very, very long.

There are so many actresses that I love. I think Jennifer Lawrence is a prodigy. I think Elle Fanning is absolutely amazing.

My first kiss was in the geography room, where you put all the maps. I actually don't know how to say it in English.

I don't know if I will be acting all my life, honestly.

When I was a kid, my dream was to be an actress and to be able to jump from one world to another, to disappear into roles, that people wouldn't recognize me from one movie to another. So I feel very lucky that I have the opportunity to live that dream.

I never thought I'd have the opportunity to visit another culture.

'Do I have a purpose.' Right. And of course you do. Otherwise, you wouldn't be on Earth. I really strongly believe that if we're here, it's for a reason.

All of the characters I've had the chance to create are survivors. But we live in a world where surviving makes up most of what we do.

I never take anything personally when it doesn't concern me.

Before I was a mum, I could live in another dimension, create another world, and it wouldn't bother me if I was not totally available or totally myself. Today I cannot do that anymore.

When you don't have time, especially for a director, you cannot do exactly what you want to do. You have to cut your dream to fit in the movie you're doing.

Michael Fassbender is just a creative force: he finds authenticity in singularity with what he brings, and it's always authentic. He doesn't try to be creative and different for the sake of it.

We need to fight for women's rights, but I don't want to separate women from men. We're separated already because we're not made the same, and it's the difference that creates this energy in creation and love.

If I just wear something because I feel like myself and I'm comfortable, that's okay - and that goes even for more edgy things. But if I try too much, or if I even try, it doesn't work. It doesn't feel natural, and I feel very uncomfortable.

It's always a weird feeling being on the red carpet, but the more I go, the more I try to connect myself to the here and now. And breathe. That's the way I make the experience a good one. If I think too much - if my head is somewhere else because I'm stressed out - it shows.

I never look at any pictures of myself on the red carpet. I can't do that.

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.

It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If evil has a geographical place, and if the evil has a name, that is the beginning of fascism. Real life is not this way. You have fanatics and narrow-minded people everywhere.

Smoking kills you, but life kills you, and if you don't want to die, go into a freezer when you are born and nothing will happen to you.

I'm very open and never write what I'm going to say. Speeches bore everybody else. I have to freestyle. Every time, from one program to another, everything changes and I improvise.

A Muslim fanatic and a Christian fanatic, a Jewish fanatic, a secular fanatic, an atheist fanatic, a communist fanatic - all of them are the same. The thinking that, 'If you don't think like me, that if you are not with me, then you are against me;' this is something to condemn.

If people are given the chance to experience life in more than one country, they will hate a little less. It's not a miracle potion, but little by little you can solve problems in the basement of a country, not on the surface.

Image is an international language.

I'm a pacifist. I believe there are ways to solve the world's problems. Instead of putting all this money to create arms, I think countries should invest in scholarships for kids to study abroad. Perhaps they could become good and knowledgeable professors in their own countries. You need time for that kind of change, though.

If today I have to make a political statement, it is, 'I love beauty.' I think beauty makes people better.

You know, I'm a really individualistic person. I'm extremely narcissistic and egocentric, too. So I have one life, and I have to live it the way I want.

Writing is not for me. I completely lose my sense of humor when I write. I become extremely pathetic, very sensational. Images give me possibilities that I don't have with words.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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