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.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses the difference between the simplicity of political solutions and the complex nature of artistic perspectives.
Marjane Satrapi's quote highlights the contrast between the brushstrokes of politicians, who often provide simplistic answers to multifaceted issues, and artists like herself, who delve into the complexities of life and society. She suggests that while politicians may simplify complicated questions for public consumption, artists seek deeper understanding and expression of those very complexities, often questioning societal norms and offering nuanced views that provoke thought and reflection.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the role of creativity in problem-solving, one might quote this to emphasize the depth of artistic thought.
More from Marjane Satrapi
All quotes →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.
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.
The best thing I ever did in my life was to ask, 'Do I like everybody?' And the answer was, 'No.' So why should everybody like me? If people are against me, so what? I'm against them too.
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It's an artist's duty to reflect the times in which we live.
Because of 'World War Z' and 'The Walking Dead,' I can't pitch a modest little zombie film which is meant to be sociopolitical.
I was just a punk kid, trying to get a sound out of a guitar that I couldn't get off the rack, so I built one myself ... I wanted a Gibson type of sound but with a Strat vibrato .. I went to town painting it and I put three pickups back in, but they don't work - only the rear one works
An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.
This idea that my work is about hip-hop is a little reductive. What I'm interested in is the performance of masculinity, the performance of ethnicity, and how they intermingle across cultures.
The beautiful is a phenomenon which is never apparent of itself, but is reflected in a thousand different works of the creator.