Top 180 Marjane Satrapi Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 4

51. “War always takes you by surprise.”

— Marjane Satrapi

52. “We found ourselves veiled and separated from our friends.”

— Marjane Satrapi

53. “I have always thought that if women’s hair posed so many problems, God would certainly have made us bald.”

— Marjane Satrapi

54. “The harder I tried to assimilate, the more I had the feeling that I was distancing myself from my culture, betraying my parents and my origins, that I was playing a game by somebody else’s rules.”

— Marjane Satrapi

55. “I wanted to be an educated, liberated woman. And if the pursuit of knowledge meant getting cancer, so be it.”

— Marjane Satrapi

56. “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

57. “I don’t want to quit smoking. I am convinced that if I quit smoking, the world would go to hell.”

— Marjane Satrapi

58. “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

59. “The first writing of the human being was drawing, not writing.”

— Marjane Satrapi

60. “Prosperity consists of two things: tea after a meal, and a cigarette after tea.”

— Marjane Satrapi

61. “And so I was lost, without any bearings... what could be worse than that?”

— Marjane Satrapi

62. “I finally understood what my grandmother meant. If I wasn’t comfortable with myself, I would never be comfortable.”

— Marjane Satrapi

63. “Human beings have a lot of problems identifying themselves with other human beings who don’t resemble them exactly. But there’s something about drawing that means that anyone can identify to a drawing. I mean, people can identify themselves with Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.”

— Marjane Satrapi

64. “Teacher: What do you want to be when you grow up? Marji: I’ll be a prophet.”

— Marjane Satrapi

65. “Guns may shoot and knives may carve, but we won’t wear your silly scarves!”

— Marjane Satrapi

66. “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

67. “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

68. “There are things that I love in Iranian cinema and things that I don’t. In Iranian cinema, you have to use metaphor because you are living under a dictatorship.”

— Marjane Satrapi

69. “To educate myself, I had to understand everything. Starting with myself, me, Marji, the woman.”

— Marjane Satrapi

70. “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

71. “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

72. “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

73. “With this first cigarette, I kissed childhood goodbye. Now I was a grown-up.”

— Marjane Satrapi

74. “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

75. “I have been brought up open-minded. If I didn’t know any people from other countries, I’d think everyone was evil based on news stories. But I know a lot of people, and know that there is no such thing as stark good and evil. Isn’t it possible there is the same amount of evil everywhere?”

— Marjane Satrapi

76. “In any case, it’s the cowardice of people like you who give dictators the chance to install themselves!”

— Marjane Satrapi

77. “With live-action I think we’d have lost the universal appeal of the Persepolis story. With live-action, it would have turned into a story of ‘the Other’ – people living in a distant land who don’t look like us. It might have been exotic, but also a “Third-World” story.”

— Marjane Satrapi

78. “Oh my!! How you’ve grown. Soon you’ll be catching the Lord’s balls.”

— Marjane Satrapi

79. “Is religion defending our physical integrity or is it just opposed to fashion?”

— Marjane Satrapi

80. “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

81. “For me, drawing is a question of death and life. Every day I draw, I write, I do something.”

— Marjane Satrapi

82. “For a revolution to succeed, the entire population must support it.”

— Marjane Satrapi

83. “I’m happy to see you so well-settled here. Now you must make an effort, you must become somebody. I don’t care what you do later, only try to be the best. Even if you become a cabaret dance, better that you dance at the lido than in a hole in the wall.”

— Marjane Satrapi

84. “You draw the character from all angles – side, profile, back, etc. so the animator has this character in all the ways it looks like.”

— Marjane Satrapi

85. “I am very bad at computers. I don’t really know how to write email.”

— Marjane Satrapi

86. “It’s true that, in Iran, women have half of the rights men do. And yet 66 per cent of students are women.”

— Marjane Satrapi

87. “I wanted to die. Where were my parents to take me in their arms, to reassure me?”

— Marjane Satrapi

88. “Drawing – it’s the first language of human beings, before writing, before even talking, before words, human beings was drawing.”

— Marjane Satrapi

89. “I’m a very individualistic person. That is why I don’t belong to any political party or anything. I really believe in justice and freedom.”

— Marjane Satrapi

90. “Night brings good counsel”, my grandmother always told me.”

— Marjane Satrapi

91. “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

92. “If it’s a good work of adaptation, the book should remain a book and the film should remain a film, and you should not necessarily read the book to see the film. If you do need that, then that means that it’s a failure. That is what I think.”

— Marjane Satrapi

93. “I was in love with Darth Vader. He was extremely sexy to me. Once I had almost a sexual dream about Darth Vader. At the moment he was about to pull his helmet off, my husband woke me up and I was so annoyed. I told him, “I was on my way to kiss Darth Vader.””

— Marjane Satrapi

94. “One must educate oneself.”

— Marjane Satrapi

95. “My natural optimism just leads me to be skeptical.”

— Marjane Satrapi

96. “I call Iran home because no matter how long I live in France, and despite the fact that I feel also French after all these years, to me the word ‘home’ has only one meaning: Iran. I suppose it’s that way for everyone: Home is the place where one is born and raised.”

— Marjane Satrapi

97. “It’s always extremely interesting to speak at colleges. My books are taught in many colleges in America and are part of the educational system, so it’s really important to me. I don’t believe in so many things in life, but something I believe in is education.”

— Marjane Satrapi

98. “What do you want me to say, sir? That I’m the vegetable that I refused to become, that I’m so disappointed in myself that I can no longee look at myself in the mirror? That I hate myself?”

— Marjane Satrapi

99. “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

100. “I love the French for their sarcasm, their irony. I love them for their bad moods.”

— Marjane Satrapi