Marjane Satrapi is an Iranian-born French graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, film director, and children’s book author. Her best-known works include the comic book Persepolis and its film adaptation, the graphic novel Chicken with Plums, and the Marie Curie biopic Radioactive. These Marjane Satrapi quotes will motivate you.
Best Marjane Satrapi Quotes
- “If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “In life you’ll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it’s because they’re stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance… Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “The real war is not between the West and the East. The real war is between intelligent and stupid people.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
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“Life is too short to be lived badly.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “Culture and education are the lethal weapons against all kinds of fundamentalism.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “Drawing is the first language of the human being before writing. It’s a transcription of how the human being sees reality, not reality itself.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “My culture comes from everywhere. I’m sick of this notion of nationality, that if you’re brought up in the same city or same country you’re the same. Even three kids brought up in the same family with the same genes, they are not the same. Just consider a human a human.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
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“All big changes of the world come from words.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “The world is not about Batman and Robin fighting the Joker; things are more complicated than that. And nothing is scarier than the people who try to find easy answers to complicated questions.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “Evil is international and the fanatic is international and universal. There is no difference between a Muslim fanatic, a Christian fanatic, even a secular fanatic.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “When we’re afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators’ repression.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If evil has a geographical place, and if the evil has a name, that is the beginning of fascism. Real-life is not this way. You have fanatics and narrow-minded people everywhere.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
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“Politicians think they have answers for everything. We artists, we only have questions.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “My mother always told me I had to do 100 times better than a man. I had to work hard at maths, and learn four languages.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “I don’t believe in the clash of cultures. The culture is one. The culture is a ring off the same chain. Picasso was very much influenced by the African arts, and he influenced a whole other generation of artists. So everything influences everything.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “The best thing I ever did in my life was to ask, ‘Do I like everybody?’ And the answer was, ‘No.’ So why should everybody like me? If people are against me, so what? I’m against them too.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn’t even know anymore why I was living.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “I’m someone who lived in a war for five years. I received bombs on my head every day of my childhood. Did that stop me from living? Did that stop me from laughing?” ~ Marjane Satrapi
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“Nothing’s worse than saying goodbye. It’s a little like dying.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “I don’t like the word ‘autobiography.’ I rather like the term ‘autofiction.’ The second you make a script out of the story of your life, it becomes fictional. Of course, the truth is never far. But the story is created out of it.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “Maybe the biggest problem is that there’s no empathy. Nobody puts themselves in the place of others. Everyone thinks they are the only one to suffer. Or that they’re the only ones who like ice cream or take their kids on vacation.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “Imagine if I cannot stand someone and every day he is here in my face, then I cannot work. Then, the whole time, I am thinking “I hate him, I hate him.” But if I love him or I love her, then I can do anything, then I am comfortable. That’s why it’s so important to be surrounded by people that you really like.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “I respect humanity. That’s my religion. I can’t stand these religions that are really businesses. So much money everywhere that’s going to buy a really nice house in heaven – or what? I don’t get it.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
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“Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “A Muslim fanatic and a Christian fanatic, a Jewish fanatic, a secular fanatic, an atheist fanatic, a communist fanatic – all of them are the same. The thinking that, ‘If you don’t think like me, that if you are not with me, then you are against me;’ this is something to condemn.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “People, they think that animation is a style. Animation is just a technique. It’s like, people, they think that comics is a style, like comics is a superhero story. Comic is just a narration, and is a medium, you can say any kind of story in comics and you can say of any kind of story in animation.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “My mother was the favorite child of her parents. My father was the favorite child of his parents. The result of these two favorite children was me. And I am an only child. So I was convinced that I was the center of the universe.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “It’s fear that makes us lose our conscience. It’s also what transforms us into cowards.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
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“Image is an international language.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “We can only feel sorry for ourselves when our misfortunes are still supportable. Once this limit is crossed, the only way to bear the unbearable is to laugh at it.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “Comics are just another medium to express yourself. It’s not cinema; it’s not literature; it’s just something else. It has a specific requirement, which is that images are used to tell the story. There are lots of crappy movies, with guns and action and Arnold Schwarzenegger or whatever.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “I hate this word ‘graphic novel.’ It is a term publishing houses have created for the bourgeois so they wouldn’t be ashamed of buying comics… I’m not a graphic novelist. I am a cartoonist and I make comics and I am very happy about it.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “My real background was in art studies. At the beginning I was a painter, then I was this graphic designer, then I became an illustrator, then I was a comic artist. But for me it’s a different way of expression, a different field of art. They’re not separated; everything for me is related.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw, it seems a shame to choose one. I think it’s better to do both.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
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“I don’t think of myself as a rebel; I just say what I think.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “Racism is not nearly as important as poverty. That’s the same around the world. What look like ethnic problems are really economic issues. If you look closely at all these conflicts around the world, they come down to poverty and economics and resources. The more poverty, the worse the war.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “That’s the story of life – when you start enjoying people, it’s always too late.” ~ Marjane Satrapi quotes
- “I have my dark side. You have your dark side. From the second that we have a brain, there are things that are not right – we are human beings with all these illusions and complexes and everything. That’s attractive to me.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “The Germans sell chemical weapons to Iran and Iraq. The wounded are then sent to Germany to be treated. Veritable human guinea pigs.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “War always takes you by surprise.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
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“One can forgive but one should never forget.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “Writing is not for me. I completely lose my sense of humor when I write. I become extremely pathetic, very sensational. Images give me possibilities that I don’t have with words.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “Here’s the problem: the description of the world is always reduced to yes or no, black or white. Superficial stories. Superhero stories. One side is the good one. The other one is evil.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “When you say ‘revolution’ when you have only men outside, you know that something is going wrong. I’m not like a hardcore feminist, but I think that one of the things that makes the society advanced is equality between men and women. If half of the society is oppressed by the other half, it’s not fine.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “If you have a little sensibility or a heart, you have all the reason to be depressed once in a while. But the depression is like a motor for creation. I need a little bit of depression, a bit of acid in my stomach, to be able to create. When I’m happy, I just want to dance.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
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“Fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators’ repression.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “I like to make mechanical stuff. Once I make a film I have to do whatever I can make onstage I make it onstage.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “If people are given the chance to experience life in more than one country, they will hate a little less. It’s not a miracle potion, but little by little you can solve problems in the basement of a country, not on the surface.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “You know, they say in France that translation is like a woman: she is either beautiful or faithful.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “You never have these moments that, you know, are always perfect. Always something happens.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “Hunger eats civilization. The West is not hungry; that’s why they can say they’re so civilized. Civilization is the biggest bluff!” ~ Marjane Satrapi
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“I had learned that you should always shout louder than your aggressor.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “I became the voice of a generation in a very surprising way, because many Iranians recognize themselves in it. But that is not what I wanted.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “For me George Bush is just as scary, if not more. Because he doesn’t look like a scary guy, because he’s shaved and he has a tie on. But he’s a real fanatic – a fanatic by definition is the one who says, if you are not with me, you are against me, and that’s exactly the position he takes. The mullahs in my country, it’s obvious. But a guy who says I am the president of the biggest secular democracy in the world and asks people to read the Bible and make crusades and says he’s God’s best friend – this guy is even more scary because you don’t see it at the beginning.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “America is a very special place. In this country, you have the best and the worst at the same time. Whatever you can imagine.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “Well, I would have much preferred to have had a normal childhood. I would have loved it if my greatest dilemma, at 14, was whether to go to Benetton for my pullovers. I would have preferred not to have cried all the tears I have cried.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
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“I am very bad at computers. I don’t really know how to write email.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “You have to be narcissistic to be an artist. You have to think you are the centre of the whole thing otherwise why do you create? The only thing is to recognise it, and then you make the best of it.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “I don’t consider myself as a feminist but more a humanist.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “In every religion, you find the same extremists.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
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“I don’t make a career plan. I take things the way they come.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “I really didn’t know what to think about the veil. Deep down I was very religious but as a family we were very modern and avant-garde. I was born with religion. At the age of six I was already sure I was the last prophet. This was few years before the revolution.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “You know, the cynicism that is in the politics, it is not for my soul. It makes me – out of me, an extremely bitter, cynical person that I hate to see in the mirror, really.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “The most exciting time is when I think of an idea and how I imagine I can make it. It would be wonderful if there was a projector inside my eye that and it could just put the idea on the screen for people to see.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
- “As a director, you have to understand what is happening – if I don’t understand it, you can’t make changes.” ~ Marjane Satrapi
