“I wasn’t searching for a common denominator – I started wondering about the challenge of working in other cultures. What I reached was the sudden acknowledgment of the universal aspect of filmmaking.”

You’ve noticed that same joke told by two different people, once works, and the other time doesn’t, simply because how the person edits it. The silences, the pauses, what they neglect, what they emphasize – all of this matters.

I really think that I don’t mind people sleeping during my films, because I know that some very good films might prepare you for sleeping or falling asleep or snoozing. It’s not to be taken badly at all.

My car is my best friend. My office. My home. My location. I have a very intimate sense when I am in a car with someone next to me. We’re in the most comfortable seats because we’re not facing each other, but sitting side by side.

In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.

I can only display what I’ve been nurtured with, which is this worldview which has become my view. If I displayed anything different from it in my work, I wouldn’t deserve this heritage.

I believe there’s only good cinema and bad cinema.

While shooting Ten I was sitting in the backseat, but I didn’t interfere. Sometimes, I was following in another car, so I was not even present on the “set”, because I thought they would work better in my absence.

I have received the digital camera as a blessing. It has really changed my life as a filmmaker, because I don’t use my camera anymore as a camera. I don’t feel it as a camera.

I never reflect or convey that which I have not experienced myself.

The experience of life teaches us that being like someone in love is more real, because everything is uncertain.

If we’re not going to take full advantage of digital, then 35mm is a better medium. Especially for shooting dramas – I have no problem with 35mm.

I have somewhat lost my enthusiasm in the last years. Mainly because film students using digital video these days have not really produced anything which is more than superficial or simplistic; so I have my doubts.

We are nothing but a link between our culture and what we can actually produce.

Having an international voice is not really about whether we speak Persian or any other language.

In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture.

I’m still very grateful to digital cameras in general, but I didn’t have this feeling with the RED one.

It would appear that, on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs.

But as an amateur, the highest level you can box at is the Olympics. I did that at 18 and felt it was time to move on to other challenges as a professional.

I prefer to have longevity. I like as great a variety as possible, hopefully to avoid getting stuck in one kind of character, having to do it over and over again.

I follow a dairy-free and gluten-free diet, which can be challenging in some places.

Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.

I don’t have all the answers. I need your help, your guidance, and your leadership to tackle the challenges before us.

It is in the ordinances of the temple that we are placed under covenant to Him….[If] we will enter into our covenants without reservation or apology, the Lord will protect us. We will receive inspiration sufficient for the challenges of life.

International terrorism is throwing down a challenge, and not just to Russia.