"Some movies bring out the creativity in you. Every single audience member can become creative in the face of a particular movie. If you happen to like my films, it's because my films provide a bed for you on which you can find your creativity. The Hollywood movies do not provide that for you."

Loneliness

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This quotation examines the core nature of Loneliness as articulated by Abbas Kiarostami. Within historical and literary traditions, reflections on Loneliness provide actionable mental models, challenging individuals to evaluate personal ethics, self-discipline, and daily actions.

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About Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer. An active filmmaker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy (1987–1994), Close-Up (1990), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), and Taste of Cherry (1997), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year. In later works, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively. His films Where Is the Friend's House? (1987), Close-Up, and The Wind Will Carry Us were ranked among the 100 best foreign films in a 2018 critics' poll by BBC Culture. Close-Up was also ranked one of the 50 greatest movies of all time in the famous decennial Sight & Sound poll conducted in 2012. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of Iran, and of all time.

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More by Abbas Kiarostami

"Religion works on some people but not on everyone, because it says, 'Stop thinking and accept what I tell you.' That's not valid for people who want to think and reflect."

— Abbas Kiarostami
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"I would say that no film is apolitical. There are politics in all films. Any film that is anchored in a society, any film that deals with humanity is necessarily political."

— Abbas Kiarostami
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"In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you."

— Abbas Kiarostami
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"All the different nations in the world, despite their differences of appearance and religion and language and way of life, still have one thing in common, and that is what's inside of all of us. If we X-rayed the insides of different human beings, we wouldn't be able to tell from those X-rays what the person's language or background or race is."

— Abbas Kiarostami
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More about Loneliness

"I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be left alone.' There is all the difference."

— Greta Garbo
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"But it required a disastrous, internecine war to bring this question of human freedom to a crisis, and the process of striking the shackles from the slave was accomplished in a single hour."

— Wendell Willkie
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"I believe in capitalism for everybody, not necessarily high finance but capitalism that works for the working men and women of this country who are out there paddling alone in America right now."

— Rick Santorum
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"I'm not at the point where I'd feel safe in a house alone. I would be really scared. I'm the kind of person that when I get up to go use the bathroom I have this big long hallway, and I just know someone's going to jump out and get me."

— Britney Spears
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