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I think life is so difficult to catch, it’s so furtive, that a copy, a film, can in no way catch it and represent it.

Abbas Kiarostami

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

Culture Order Own Rooted Universal
I think it was [Jean-Luc] Godard who said that life is nothing but a bad copy of film, but then our ambition must be to make better films and better shapes of forms that are given in life.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Ambition Bad Copy Film Life Nothing Shape Thinking
I don’t generally derive my stories from novels. I try to turn into film things I have felt or experienced.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Derive Experienced Film Novel Story Trying
The only thing that I can do is hold a mirror in front of men and women, in front of the viewer in the theater, to reflect. There is nothing but reflection that I could intend to offer the viewer of the film.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Front Hold Men Mirror Nothing Reflection Viewer
Cinema gives you the opportunity to be both a grandparent and a grandchild whereas in life you cannot be both at the same time.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Cinema Giving Grandchildren Lesson Life Opportunity
Cinema seats make people lazy. They expect to be given all the information. But for me, question marks are the punctuation of life.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Cinema Lazy Life People Punctuation Seat
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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Complication Deny Expression Life Perception Thinking
My car’s 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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Best Car Friend Home Intimate Location Sense View
In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Darkness Desire Hope Poetry Still Total You
Having an international voice is not really about whether we speak Persian or any other language.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

International Language Persian Speak Voice
The experience of life teaches us that being like someone in love is more real, because everything is uncertain.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Experience Life Love More Real Teach Uncertain
I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theater. Some films have made me doze off in the theater, but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Audience Film Morning Night Sleep Theatre
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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Accept Belief Insulted Justified Thinking Violence
I prefer the countryside to cities. This is also true of my films: I have made more films in rural societies, and villages, than in towns.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

City Village Film Prefer Society Town True
People have curiosity, they have intelligence, they have interest in understanding their peers. But producers and directors of cinema have decided that the seats in the theaters have been made to transform people’s minds to lazy minds.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Cinema Curiosity Director Intelligence Interest Peer People Producer Understanding
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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

Better Football Footballer Home Rule Thinking

I think life is so difficult to catch, it’s so furtive, that a copy, a film, can in no way catch it and represent it.

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I think life is so difficult to catch, it’s so furtive, that a copy, a film, can in no way catch it and represent it.

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Popular Authors

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