“I never wanted to be away from the family. Intuitively, I knew how easily distances could harden and become permanent.”

Source: The Stream of Life

Source: White Oleander

Slate interview (2015)
Context: I just wanted something symbolic, something that everybody could understand easily, and everybody could share regardless of where they’re from and whether they’re a keen observer of illustration usually. I just wanted something universal. … a few people from different places follow my work, and I enjoy communicating to them, usually for happier reasons. What I do in general is try to communicate with people — and I’m aware that the more you want to communicate to a larger audience, the more universal and simple you have to be.  It’s an image for everyone. It’s not my image — it’s not a piece of work that I’m proud of or anything — I didn’t create it to get credit or benefit from it. I just wanted to express myself, and from experience I know that through social media people like expressing themselves, or need to express themselves. It is somehow quite organic, the way these things go — you can’t really plan on it. I would just say that if people have used it so much, and if they felt like it was useful for them to share, then the image worked and I’m happy, so to speak, even though happiness is not really a thought that springs to my mind in such horrible times.

As quoted in "Concerns Beyond Just Where the Wild Things Are" by Patricia Cohen in The New York Times (9 September 2008)

Source: Succubus Blues

Source: Post Office

Source: Atonement

Source: Tatiana and Alexander

Outlooks
Source: Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, 2014 https://www.cgie.org.ir/fa/news/11919