Exile is like death. You cannot understand it until it happens to you.

If you want to do what you want to do, you cannot work. So art is going to be finished, and this is the will of the Islamic republic: to not have any artists or art and close the doors of all the cinemas and music and everything.

Paris is a city that liberates you as a woman from all your sins that you think you are guilty of; it washes away all of that, and you are free.

There's an expression in Persian, 'to play with the lion's tail.' I wasn't what Iranian society wanted me to be - a good girl. I played with the lion's tail.

Those who have never suffered the iniquities of exile cannot possibly understand the significance, the gravitas, of a mattress.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.