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?
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of openness and understanding in shaping one's perceptions of good and evil.
Marjane Satrapi reflects on the complexities of morality, suggesting that media narratives can skew our perceptions of people from different cultures. Her experiences with diverse individuals inform her belief that good and evil are not absolute qualities but exist on a spectrum, showing that understanding and personal connections can challenge prejudiced views.
In practice
In a discussion on cultural differences, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of personal experience over media influence.
It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If evil has a geographical place, and if the evil has a name, that is the beginning of fascism. Real life is not this way. You have fanatics and narrow-minded people everywhere.
If it's a good work of adaptation, the book should remain a book and the film should remain a film, and you should not necessarily read the book to see the film. If you do need that, then that means that it's a failure. That is what I think.
I'm not a politician. I don't know how to solve the problems of the world. But as an artist, I have one duty: to ask questions.
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.
For me, drawing is a question of death and life. Every day I draw, I write, I do something.
My mother always told me I had to do 100 times better than a man. I had to work hard at maths, and learn four languages.
Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.
This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this 'cool' smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion
When you give, give from the place of the heart because it is the right thing to do, not the easy thing to do.
But, alas! what poor Woman is ever taught that she should have a higher Design than to get her a Husband?
From a Buddhist point of view, emotions are not real. As an actor, I manufacture emotions. They're a sense of play. But real life is the same. We're just not aware of it.
The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.
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