Abbas Kiarostami Quotes

I think I really produce my best work in Iran.

I spend a lot of time doing carpentry. Sometimes there is nothing that gives me the contentment that sawing a piece of wood does.

I really think that I don't mind people sleeping during my films, because I know that some very good films might prepare you for sleeping or falling asleep or snoozing. It's not to be taken badly at all. This is something I really mean.

I really enjoy listening to stories. I remember them and keep them in my mind.

I prefer the countryside to cities. This is also true of my films: I have made more films in rural societies, and villages, than in towns.

I never reflect or convey that which I have not experienced myself.

I never really learned photography.

I have no advice for anyone on how to live.

I film normal-life subjects in natural settings that some people would consider uncinematic. But what I want to show is nature itself, as the truth of life.

I feel like a tree. A tree doesn't feel a duty to start doing something about the earth from which it comes. A tree just has to bear fruit, and leaves and blossoms. It doesn't feel grateful to the earth.

I don't know whether it is fortunate or unfortunate, but I have no such thing as national pride. I don't feel proud that I am Iranian. I happen to be who I am.

I can watch films and say how technically beautiful they are, but I'm not impressed by any technicality.

I am a citizen of the world.

Good cinema is what we can believe, and bad cinema is what we can't believe.

From my very first movie, what was my concentration, my inspiration, was I didn't want to narrate something, I didn't want to tell a story. I wanted to show something, I wanted for them to make their own story from what they were seeing.

Film is very much a universal and common voice, and we can't limit it to one particular culture.

Everybody knows that I am not usually patient enough to actually sit down and watch one of my own films from the beginning to the end - I never do.

Digital photography is, by definition, unfinished. You don't feel that after every 24 or 36 shots you have to change your film - you know you can go on for ever if you want. You can see the result immediately, and find out if your original idea is worth going on with or not, whether it can be correc

Cinema seats make people lazy. They expect to be given all the information. But for me, question marks are the punctuation of life.

Cinema gives you the opportunity to be both a grandparent and a grandchild whereas in life you cannot be both at the same time.

As film-makers, it is very important for us to find common ground between cultures, and maybe that's less the case for politicians who benefit more from finding the conflicts and differences between us.

All the different nations in the world, despite their differences of appearance and religion and language and way of life, still have one thing in common, and that is what's inside of all of us. If we X-rayed the insides of different human beings, we wouldn't be able to tell from those X-rays what t

A work of art doesn't exist outside the perception of the audience.

A movie is about human beings, about humanity.

A good movie is made by an initial burst of energy, the way that, when you are in school, your class exercises are always better than your final projects.