I myself had to grow a longer beard and Afghan clothes. I was in danger of being kidnapped by smugglers, though I didn't know it at the time.

Because there is so little room for expression otherwise, a lot of people love cinema because they find it a way of expressing themselves.

From my films, you can at least learn about Iran, you can get a sense of the history and the society. But no such films have been made about Afghanistan, so you really can't know much about it.

I was in jail four and a half years. When I came out, I continued the same struggle against injustice, but instead of using weapons, I began to use art and cinema.

The Buddhas had to be destroyed by the Taliban to get the world thinking about Afghanistan.

Afghan society is very complex, and Afghanistan has a very complex culture. Part of the reason it has remained unknown is because of this complexity.

Usually people like to categorise artists. With my films, I categorise people: if I know which one of my movies you like, I can tell which kind of a person you are.

Do you know that every day, 10 people in Afghanistan are injured by landmines? It will continue for the next 50 years, because the country has the largest number of landmines in the world.

But also, there are no films being made about Afghanistan.

There's an 800 kilometer border between Iran and Afghanistan.

I'm not playing myself. It's a symbolic situation, where I want to introduce a fascist behind the table. I couldn't have had anybody else do that; for it to be successful, I had to do it myself.

The more humble and obedient to God a man is, the more wise and at peace he will be in all that he does.

Strength is sufficient grace

Have you ever made a decision that sounded good at the time but then led to unanticipated results?

We are the stories we tell ourselves

Now nothing can prevent this but mortification; that withers the root and strikes at the head of sin every hour, so that whatever it aims at it is crossed in.

The only soap of a dirty society is the clean men; only the clean can wash the grimy!

I don't so much mind that newspapers are dying - it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.

I believe that one's basic financial attitudes are - like a tendency toward fat knees - probably formed in utero, or, at the very latest, in cribbo.

I drink to keep body and soul apart.

Certain words now in our knowledge we will not use again, and we will never forget them. We need them. Like the back of the picture.