“I think being someone in love is so hard to define, so temporary, because retrospectively we often deny the state in which we were in love.”

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.

However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.

An economy is not a complicated thing; it just has a lot of moving parts.

In our development, as we grow throughout our lives, the structure of our beliefs becomes very complicated, and we make it even more complicated because we make the assumption that what we believe is the absolute truth.

Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.

Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too.

Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see how uncomplicated and happy your life can become.

As you let go of the complications, emotional toxins, and everything else that isn’t serving you, you will be free to experience the happiness that exists in simplicity.

I never blame failure – there are too many complicated situations in life – but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort.