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.
I think animation is like running a marathon, and making a movie is like a 100 meter sprint. The question is: are you a marathon man or are you a sprinter? I realized that I was more of a sprinter than a marathon man. With a long, long project, I get bored easily.
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.
A real love story has to finish bad. That is what I think.
I'm not a politician because I'm an artist. Politicians have a very easy answer for a very complicated question. I have a very complicated question for what you consider very easy situations.
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?
I had this fantasy that in a democracy the government was the population. So I came to America and got a big slap in my face... Americans were not what I thought. I thought I was going to see bastards and I saw nice people, very friendly to me.
I love the French for their sarcasm, their irony. I love them for their bad moods.
That's the story of life - when you start enjoying people, it's always too late.
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.
Revolutions just spread blood. Evolution - this is something that changes in the long term.
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.
It's true that, in Iran, women have half of the rights men do. And yet 66 per cent of students are women.
In the West, people don't have any real problems. It's all based on bad conscience, a very Christian notion. I don't have any bad conscience. If there's a God that created us, if I am bad, it's his fault.
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.
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.
I am absolutely not a feminist, I am against stupidity, and if it comes from males or females, it doesn't change anything. If it means that women and men, they are equal, then OK, certainly I am a feminist.
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.
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.
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.
The movie business is not about the money. Of course, you need money to make the movie. If you have a small budget, adapt yourself. Having $200 million dollars doesn't ensure that you're definitely going to make a good movie. There's so many examples that prove that.
The way that you remember your life, it's never linear. You have flashes of different moments of your life, and the flashes aren't equal; they have different styles.
I like to be sad once in a while. You need it for your equilibrium.
I had two major activities as a child. I was trying to put on shows with kids in my street, or I was drawing. Actually, what I'm doing now is exactly what I was doing then. Either I'm drawing, or I'm gathering people for a common project. The only difference is that now they are paying me for that.
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.
To tell you the truth, I never wanted to become a moviemaker. It was like I was a cinepihile, and I go, like, three or four times per week to the cinema, and I like to watch films.
I think the only universal thing is one individual. If you talk about a country or a nation or a culture, it's so vague. I mean what is a nation? A nation is full of nice and bad and long and tall and short and thin people. It's not like everybody is the same.
I think that all stories - if you make movies about zombies and aliens - it has always to do with your personal story. If not directly, it is about your fears, your obsessions, things like that.
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.
I always say to people, 'You know, if Romeo and Juliet got married, nobody would care about them.' Imagine Romeo and Juliet, six kids yelling, 'Mama, Mama, Papa, Papa!'
If the majority of people were right, we'd be living in paradise. But we are not living in paradise, we are living in hell. What does it mean? That means the majority of people are wrong. So I never believed what people told me.
My point of view when I make a book or I make a movie is to see the humanistic point of view. The point of view of the daily life of normal people.
I'm a pacifist. I believe there are ways to solve the world's problems. Instead of putting all this money to create arms, I think countries should invest in scholarships for kids to study abroad. Perhaps they could become good and knowledgeable professors in their own countries. You need time for that kind of change, though.
The real war is not between the West and the East. The real war is between intelligent and stupid people.
You hear people saying, 'Oh I'm so tired, I've had enough of Cannes.' How can you have enough of Cannes? It's just the best place to be, like a fairytale.
You know, I'm a really individualistic person. I'm extremely narcissistic and egocentric, too. So I have one life, and I have to live it the way I want.
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.
Americans think cinema is about storytelling; I don't believe that. I think it's a language and everyone has to find their own way of speaking. It's not so much what you say as the way you say it.
You know, comics were created at the same time as the cinema. And the cinema very quickly became a major art. Cartooning didn't become a major art. There's a reason for that. People don't know how to deal with drawings.
As a director, you have to understand what is happening - if I don't understand it, you can't make changes.
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.
The music that I hate the most is R&B.
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.
America is a very special place. In this country, you have the best and the worst at the same time. Whatever you can imagine.
I don't like 'graphic novel.' It's a word that publishers created for the bourgeois to read comics without feeling bad. Comics is just a way of narrating - it's just a media type.
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.
I wasn't made to take orders. My grandmother used to tell me: 'Laws are for idiots.' She was right.
It's cinematographic to smoke. Imagine Lauren Bacall without a cigarette.
I don't watch many comic-book movies. But I loved 'Sin City.'
