Asghar Farhadi Quotes

It feels very, very good to make a film freely, to work without having to wait years for script approval, without looking over your shoulder.

A really important point for me is that I don't use any brand or corporate sponsors. So I have no responsibility to anyone but myself and the subjects.

I think the line is where you're in the studio, you're creating. That belongs to you as an artist. Nothing should taint that. I shouldn't be thinking about what the fans want, I shouldn't be thinking about what the radio wants, what the label wants, what your manager wants, a song for the chicks, a song for the street.

My respect for artists is very high. I think to get the most out of them, you have to liberate them. I think part of liberating them is saying, 'Come up with something brilliant, new, and fresh. Stop thinking based on what has been beat into you by executives or publishers in terms of what's going to work and what's not. Don't react, just act.'

When I wrote 'The Girl on the Train,' nobody knew who I was, and that's quite a comfortable position to be writing in.

Most of the things I write, I write on spec. And because I write them on spec, there's less interference. Because there's less interference, they tend to be better.

Being signed to a major label was never an option because I knew having the time to find out who you are without pressure from other people is so important.

I would design for anybody who gives me a free hand and who doesn't sit on my head.

I started writing 'Normal People' not knowing that anyone would read it, not knowing that anyone would read the first book, so I didn't really have any hang ups about, 'Oh, I can't do this again. I've done this already.' It was just a project I was working on for my own amusement.

I'm not against anything that anybody might want to try to pull off in fiction. Fiction writing has to, at least, always represent a possibility of absolute freedom.

If getting on the radio was a major motivation, I'd be one of the worst writers of all time. I admire people who do it, and I think it's a nice way to work, but I try to do the best I can and write what I like. I don't worry about it.

I don't want my reasons to be informed by what people think about what I'm doing.

Doing things the way you see it, going by your own heart and soul, that is pure artistic integrity. Whether the hair is six or sixty inches long, the eyes have make-up or not, the riffs are in 'E' or 'F' sharp, the amps are Marshall or not, all those things don't matter if you are doing it for the right reason, which to me means doing it for yourself!!

When you're telling a story, I think you should tell it to its fullest, with reckless abandon, and absolutely let it be what it is.

Not even for a million dollars would I paint a tree.

I'm basically stubborn. If anyone disapproved of my being influenced by comics, I simply ignored them.

For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.

My parents, they were good, godly people, but they never said, You need to write.

Well, that's the great thing about indie film, in general. If it's not subject to the constraints of too much pressure from the studio or marketing, and all of that, you get to actually present fuller characters and you get to have the dark side of the characters. That's usually what gets cut out.

For me the thing that signals a great story is what we might call its autonomy, the fact that it detaches itself from its author like a soap bubble blown from a clay pipe.

An imaginative adventure does not enjoy the same corsets as reportage.

I never get myself in a situation where I don't have creative freedom.

Film has a tendency to be limiting in some way and it shouldn't be. It's a form that can be explored and changed.

All I care about is free speech and free expression; I want people to be able to be, do, and say anything.

I had three choices: to conform to my own beliefs, which meant death; complete silence, which meant another kind of death; to pay a tribute, a bribe. I chose the third solution by writing The Long Winter.