I look at some of my early stuff - back when I was 12 or 13 years old - and I was already doing cross-hatching back then. I don't know where I picked that up. I think I was in a hurry, and I wanted to shade something really fast, and I tried cross-hatching a shadow.

I'm very happy with the success of short films. In fact, for me, the short films make more money than the features.

I think each film I do has less and less dialogue. It really helps a lot for foreign sales, because when I go to Europe, there's very little problem with communication. All the gags are visual. The music they can understand, and it helps communicate a lot better.

If I'm really feeling good and not having a lot of interruptions, I can do a minute of animation a day, so theoretically, I could do a film in three months without any interruptions.

I needed to be more self-determining, and the most self-determining thing you can do in comedy is stand-up.

Comedy comes from tragedy, and being Iranian in America from 1979 on had been quite tragic. In stand-up comedy, I was able to take the reality and exaggerate it.

Trouble is, some accents lend themselves to comedy.

It's easier to sit there and say you don't like feminists because they don't have a sense of humor.