Maybe more than a teller, I am a story listener. I really enjoy listening to stories. I remember them and keep them in my mind. All of my films are a collection of small stories that have been told to me.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIIf I do continue to have the opportunity to work in Iran, that’s very much what I’d prefer to do.
More Abbas Kiarostami Quotes
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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.
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In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.
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I remember when I came out of an exam thinking I had done well and then I had a clue that maybe one answer was wrong, I remembered that I rather stop knowing, stop thinking about it, appreciating life instead.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground, and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
It’s very true that non-actors feel more comfortable in front of a digital camera, without the lights and the large crowd around them, and we arrive at much more intimate moments with them.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
The experience of life teaches us that being like someone in love is more real, because everything is uncertain.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
It’s true that the best way of knowing yourself is to put yourself into different situations.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
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 -
Directors don’t always create, they can also destroy with too many demands.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I really haven’t seen The Report in a long time. I don’t have a copy, but I’ll have to see it again. I think it would be good to put both these men next to each other.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I do believe that a film like Ten could never have been made with a 35mm camera. The first part of the film lasts 17 minutes, and by the end of that part, the kid has totally forgotten the camera.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
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 -
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.
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I only make notes, I don’t write dialogues in full. And the notes are very much based on my knowledge of person.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI






