Fanaticism exists in every religion, whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.

In Iran, as in all developing countries, they wanted to copy the outside world, without knowing what was good for our own country.

I was never interested in money. I always looked down on it. But now that I have less money, I see that without money, you cannot do much. Everything in the end is about money.

It’s normal that countries work for their own benefit, political and economic.

You cannot expect a foreign country to be more Catholic than the pope for you.

Iranian women are very courageous and active, even with all the oppression.

I hope in the end there will be a solution for the world, because we have advanced in so many ways, and still the world has so many different problems.

I remember I went to an exhibition somewhere and one of the artists, an Iranian lady, said, “I wish we had somewhere that our paintings would stay forever.” So this idea came to me. I said, “She‘s right, we should have a place to keep them, and not only Iranian art works, but also of foreign artists.”

I hope that things will change, because it’s a pity that a country like Iran is not where it should be, or where it has been historically. It’s important for Iran, for all of the Middle East, and also for the rest of the world.

I wanted to preserve the old buildings, not to destroy them and build something new.

There are many Iranians working at NASA. One of the engineers involved with the spaceship that went to Mars is an Iranian.

There are many people inside Iran who say, “We don’t have enough to eat. Why do we need a nuclear bomb?”

Some Iranian doctors from Europe and America go to Iran and operate for free or teach medical students there. The other day, I met a gentlemen who is helping to protect wildlife in Iran. It’s good that many of them don’t forget about their country. It’s important.

You have to judge everybody on balance, all the positives and all the negatives. In the life of my husband, I think the positives outweigh the negatives.