Marjane Satrapi Quotes

It's awful. Every day I see buses full of kids arriving. They come from the poor areas, you can tell... first they convince them that the afterlife is even better than Disneyland, then they put them in a trance with all their songs... it's nuts! They hypnotize them and just toss them into battle. Absolute carnage. The key to paradise was for poor people. Thousands of young kids, promised a better life, exploded on the minefield with their keys around their necks.

To be the mistress of a married man is to have the better role. Do you realize? His dirty shirt, his disgusting underwear, his daily ironing, his bad breath, his hemorrhoid attacks, his fuss, not to mention his bad moods, and his tantrums. Well all that is for his wife.
When a married man comes to his mistress... he's always bleached and ironed, his teeth sparkle, his breath is like perfume, he's in a good mood, he's full of conversation, he is there to have a good time with you.

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.

Dalam hidup kau akan bertemu banyak orang brengsek. Kalau mereka menyakitimu, katakan pada dirimu sendiri itu karena mereka bodoh. Itu akan membantu mencegahmu bereaksi pada kekejaman mereka. Karena tidak ada yang lebih buruk daripada kebencian dan balas dendam. Selalu jaga martabatmu dan jujurlah pada dirimu sendiri.

In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself.

La vie ne tient qu'à si peu de chose, la vie n'est qu'un soupir ...

Well depressive, I don't know. 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."

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!

We are focusing on the small details and hiding the misery in the world. Look at the smoker and we miss global warming, war, and the crap we eat — not the bad guys but smoking. I smoke and they talk about cancer, I eat and they talk about cholesterol, I make love, it's AIDS. Before AIDS and cholesterol and cancer there's the pleasure of making love and eating and smoking. I have to die someday, so if the thing that gave me pleasure all of my life kills me instead of me going under a truck, that's fine. Besides, why should I live so that when I die I give fresh meat to the worms? I hope that I am rotted and they don't want to eat me. F@#$ck the worms.

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

Marriage, it's like roulette: Sometimes one wins, often one loses. Even if you're very in love, it can still go bad.

Don't worry about it, my child. Tell yourself that you are experiencing a true love story. But of course. Have you ever seen anyone write a poem about the woman he married and who yells at him four times a day? Do you think that if Romeo and Juliet had had six children together, there would have been a book about them? You're suffering! That's why you're playing so well now!

L'Occident a vendu des armes aux deux camps et nous, nous avons été assez bêtes pour rentrer dans ce jeu cynique...huit ans de guerre pour rien! Alors maintenant l'état donne des noms de martyrs aux rues pour flatter les familles des victimes. Ills trouvent peut-être ainsi un sens à toute cette absurdité.

"Don't let it get to you, mom! The Western media also fights against us. That's where our reputation as fundamentalists and terrorists comes from."
"You're right. Between one's fanaticism and the other's disdain, it's hard to know which side to choose. Personally, I hate Saddam and I have no sympathy for the Kuwaitism but I hate just as much the cynicism of the allies who call themselves "liberators" while they're there for the oil."
"Exactly. Just look at Afghanistan! They fought there for ten years. There were 900,000 dead and today the country is still in chaos. No one lifted a finger! Because Afghanistan is poor! The worst is that the intervention in Kuwait is done in the name of the human rights! Which rights? Which humans?"
At the time, this kind of analysis wasn't commonplace. After our own war, we were happy that Iraq got itself attacked and delighted that it wasn't happening in our country. We were finally able to sleep peacefully without fear of missiles... We no longed needed to line up with our food ration coupon...the rest mattered little. And then, there wasn't any more opposition. The protesters had been executed. Or had fled the country any way possible. The regime had absolute power...and most people , in search of a cloud of happiness, had forgotten their political conscience.

When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.