“I only make notes, I don’t write dialogues in full. And the notes are very much based on my knowledge of person.”

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.

In my experience as a director, I think there is obviously something of the way men – maybe that’s a common point with Shirin – the way men see women in the film, and the way these two characters see each other.

I like that 3D is based on the fact that you look with two eyes, so two cameras imitate that.

All art is based on non-conformity.

He goes from loony to weirdly logical. With him, it’s more than clever writing; his comedy is based on clear and clever thinking.

A life of gratitude to God for being saved is far more pleasing than a life based on self-righteousness over being good.

I’ve based my entire career off of just trying to do that for them – but I always kind of forget that my real life friends can hear my music and they can watch my interviews if they want and that’s when I get kind of like- “oh…”

It should be known that Israel is based on treachery.

Too often, people think that solving the world’s problems is based on conquering the earth, rather than touching the earth, touching ground.

All intimacies are based on differences.