“I’ve often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it’s inside a frame.”

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 think, just as footballers play better at home, maybe film-makers, too, create better at home, even though the rules of football are the same wherever you go.

All the different nations in the world, despite their differences of appearance and religion and language and way of life, still have one thing in common, and that is what’s inside of all of us.

There are certainties in existence, but love is something much harder to define than light and dark, life and death. I think saying you are “like” someone in love sounds right.

I think violence can never be justified. At the same time, nobody’s culture or beliefs should be insulted, that’s not something I can accept either. But I cannot justify or accept any violence at all.

The day we run out of petrol is the day Iran will be free.

I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through.

O subtle love! a thousand wiles thou hast, by humble suit, by service, or by hire, to win a maiden’s hold,–a thing soon done, for nature framed all women to be won.

The thing itself is never just out there in the world waiting to be framed by the photographer’s Leica; rather, it is something dynamically produced in the act of representation and reception and already subject to the grids of meaning imposed on it by culture, history, language, and so forth.

Photographs are of course about their makers, and are to be read for what they disclose in that regard no less than for what they reveal of the world as their makers comprehend, invent, and describe it.

The first hope of a painter who feels hopeful about painting is the hope that the painting will move, that it will live outside its frame.

Men keep their agreements when it is an advantage to both parties not to break them; and I shall so frame my laws that it will be evident to the Athenians that it will be for their interest to observe them.

He that will sell his fame will also sell the public interest.

I think I’ve changed a little bit. I don’t know whether it’s for the better or for the worse at the moment. I’ve settled into a different mind frame now… being a bit wilder maybe!