Top 180 Marjane Satrapi Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “I chose the actors that I was in love with. I cannot work with people that I don’t personally like a lot. They can be the best actor in the world, but if the first contact is not good, if I don’t fall in love with them, then I don’t want to work with them. It’s impossible.”

— Marjane Satrapi

152. “I think with pictures; I’m a very lousy writer. If I write without pictures, I become this pathetic chick sitting somewhere trying to be interesting.”

— Marjane Satrapi

153. “Any medium can only live up to the strengths of the people working in it. If it’s been used to tell bad or boring stories, it’s not a problem with comics; it’s a problem with the writers of those comics.”

— Marjane Satrapi

154. “I don’t think of myself as a rebel; I just say what I think.”

— Marjane Satrapi

155. “But violence is news, to a certain extent, and people don’t want complicated news. Because as soon as you realize things are complicated, your life becomes more complicated.”

— Marjane Satrapi

156. “If you know a little bit the psychology of human beings, you have to understand that if you say something you should not do, then everybody wants to do it.”

— Marjane Satrapi

157. “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

158. “You never have these moments that, you know, are always perfect. Always something happens.”

— Marjane Satrapi

159. “Certainly, they’d had to endure the war, but they had each other close by. They had never known the confusion of being a third-worlder, they had always a home!”

— Marjane Satrapi

160. “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

161. “I think the best work of the director is to listen to what all the technicians around him have to say, but then the thing is to take the best decision, what you think is the best. Then, that is the moment where you have to have all the film in your head and imagine how all of that will fit together.”

— Marjane Satrapi

162. “As a director, you have to understand what is happening – if I don’t understand it, you can’t make changes.”

— Marjane Satrapi

163. “I’m not a very good financing person. I don’t even know how much money I have in my bank account. I never have opened one single envelope from the bank – they freak me out.”

— Marjane Satrapi

164. “Life is complex. You don’t have any person who is nice from the beginning until the end. You don’t always have the notion of redemption. The bad people don’t always pay.”

— Marjane Satrapi

165. “The information I have about Iran is second hand.”

— Marjane Satrapi

166. “A well-trained cat doesn’t exist because a cat remains a cat.”

— Marjane Satrapi

167. “Image is an international language.”

— Marjane Satrapi

168. “I’m very open and never write what I’m going to say. Speeches bore everybody else. I have to freestyle. Every time, from one program to another, everything changes and I improvise.”

— Marjane Satrapi

169. “The Key to Paradise was for poor people. Thousands of young kids, promised a better life, exploded on the minefields with their keys around their necks.”

— Marjane Satrapi

170. “Ouch! What are you doing, Karl, you broke my skull!”

— Marjane Satrapi

171. “The things that I do today are the things I did as a child. When I was a child, either I was drawing or I was taking all the kids off my street and I wanted to make shows – I was all the time making! The only thing is, now I know how to do it better, and now they give me money for it.”

— Marjane Satrapi

172. “I had so many professions before. I didn’t want to do this particularly. It just happened.”

— Marjane Satrapi

173. “The key to wisdom is doubt!”

— Marjane Satrapi

174. “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

175. “Men’s pride is situated in their scrotums.”

— Marjane Satrapi

176. “When you make a book or you make a movie, it is almost like hitting on somebody. It’s not because you want to seduce people that you will seduce them; you can hit on somebody and it doesn’t work. But when you hit on them and it works, then it’s really cool.”

— Marjane Satrapi

177. “Love is the opposite of good sense.”

— Marjane Satrapi

178. “It’s wonderful to have international friends.”

— Marjane Satrapi

179. “As for me, I sealed my act of rebellion against my mother’s dictatorship by smoking the cigarette I’d stolen from my uncle two weeks earlier. Kofff! Kofff! Kofff!!! It was awful. But this was not the moment to give in. With this first cigarette, I kissed childhood goodbye. Now I was a grown-up.”

— Marjane Satrapi

180. “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

181. “I asked him what his work was. He answered that he devoted all his time to his political activities... He was undoubtedly busy with the diplomatic relations between his testicles and women’s breast.”

— Marjane Satrapi

182. “Cigarettes are food for the soul.”

— Marjane Satrapi

183. “Bagaimanapun, selama ada minyak di Timur Tengah kita takkan pernah damai.”

— Marjane Satrapi

184. “You know men!! As soon as you give in to them, they ignore you.”

— Marjane Satrapi

185. “Everyone gathered around this drink in order to devote themselves to their favorite activity: discussion. This discussion had its own purpose: To speak behind others’ backs is the ventilator of the heart.”

— Marjane Satrapi

186. “Dear friend, life passes with or without God.”

— Marjane Satrapi

187. “When I went back to her room she was crying. We were not in the same social class but at least we were in the same bed.”

— Marjane Satrapi

188. “On ne peut s’apitoyer sur soi que quand nos malheurs sont encore soutenables... une fois cette limite franchie, le seul moyen de supporter l’insupportable, c’est d’en rire.”

— Marjane Satrapi

189. “500 turmans for the live and virginity of an innocent girl.”

— Marjane Satrapi

190. “When it comes to married life, character takes precedence over looks...”

— Marjane Satrapi

191. “We give meaning to life based on our point of view. Only wisdom, like the light of the candle, can bring us a complete view of existence. The key to wisdom is doubt! If you doubted a little, you would definitely be less arrogant.”

— Marjane Satrapi

192. “Get real up to a certain age, you need your parents, then later, they need you.”

— Marjane Satrapi

193. “I’m going to die and my son farts in my face... what a waste!”

— Marjane Satrapi

194. “But as far as your virginity is concerned... Now that you are married and divorced, it’s normal that you’re no longer a virgin! You can make love with whomever you want, without anyone knowing! You know! There’s no meter down here!”

— Marjane Satrapi