A Quote by Marjane Satrapi

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. — © Marjane Satrapi
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.
My mother had me on four times on TV show 'To Tell The Truth'. Four times. Only once as a contestant, but they had a bunch of kids on at the beginning of some shows, playing with toys or things like that.
I was really close to my father since I was young. He always told me that I had to work in order to become a man, so I had to stay with him when my mother left. He always took me to work to help him as a bricklayer. I was just a kid, so I did what I could do to help him.
It took me better than a quarter century to learn, the hard way, that hard work at something you want to be doing is the most fun that you can have out of bed . . . to learn that the smart man finds ways to make everything he does be work; to learn that "leisure" time is truly pleasurable (indeed tolerable) only to the extent that is its subconscious grazing for information with which to infuse newer, better work.
My mom had always wanted me to better myself. I wanted to better myself because of her. Now when the strikes started, I told her I was going to join the union and the whole movement. I told her I was going to work without pay. She said she was proud of me. (His eyes glisten. A long, long pause.) See, I told her I wanted to be with my people. If I were a company man, nobody would like me anymore. I had to belong to somebody and this was it right here.
My mother and I definitely got to a point where we had to have a real conversation and talk woman to woman, or daughter to mother, friend to friend - just off the record, clear the air and communicate. I didn't want to drive my mama crazy, but at the same time, I had to do, I had to learn, I had to grow and she understood that. She knows me better than anyone else on the planet so I tried to think about that.
I had a disc giving me a lot of trouble, and I had four surgeries. Then I had a staph infection, so they had to open me up five times in four months... It was in the bottom of my back, the same incision. They should have put a zipper on it.
At school, I had to work really hard to get a D in maths. And I wasn't slacking off; I actually did work quite hard.
I'm not certain, but I have a little gypsy blood in me. And my mother always told me that her grandma could give someone the evil eye, and I'd better not cross her because she had some of that blood in her. Mother always believed that she could predict the future, and she had dreams that came true.
When I was younger, I had to play with kids three or four years older than me because of my size, and they always had to prove they were better than the younger guy. That's the way it's been.
The twentieth century saw an amazing development of scholarship and criticism in the humanities, carried out by people who were more intelligent, better trained, had more languages, had a better sense of proportion, and were infinitely more accurate scholars and competent professional men than I. I had genius. No one else in the field known to me had quite that.
t's important to handle and learn from your defeats. The losses I've had taught me so much because they humbled me. You learn more from them than you do your victories. They can only make you a better fighter and a better man.
The stories my pupils told me were astonishing. One told how he had witnessed his cousin being shot in the back five times; another how his parents had died of AIDS. Another said that he'd probably been to more funerals than parties in his young life. For me - someone who had had an idyllic, happy childhood - this was staggering.
I trained and worked really hard all my life in dance classes. I always fell into the shadows of my mother, and it was hard for me to really realize that I had done the work. Yes, she took me to the best teachers, but I did the work.
The best armor against everything around you is to be well educated, to work hard, to be twice as good as if you had to be, to do languages and culture better.
I am a man of peace [so he told Mother, but it always appeared to me that he was the most belligerent man of peace I had ever encountered]
To be honest, I've always had far too much freedom. I had a job when I was 10. I started living on my own when I was 17 or 18. I've earned my own money; I've traveled the world. What would I rebel against? I've had so much freedom, sometimes it was hard. My parents wanted to protect me, but they had no idea how to. I had to learn as I went and make my own mistakes. I went from being totally unknown and never acting professionally to being in a major movie and being very famous. It all happened so quickly, I didn't have any time to work things out. It's been pretty scary at times.
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