“There’s always some room for improvisation.”

I was interested in both Western and Indian classical music.

What is attempted in these film is of course a synthesis. But it can be seen by someone who has his feet in both cultures. Someone who will bring to bear on the films involvement and detachment in equal measure.

My films play only in Bengal, and my audience is the educated middle class in the cities and small towns. They also play in Bombay, Madras and Delhi where there is a Bengali population.

I had developed this habit of writing scenarios as a hobby. I would find out which stories had been sold to be made into films and I would write my own treatment and then compare it.

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.

Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens.

I wouldn’t mind taking a rest for three or four months, but I have to keep on making films for the sake of my crew, who just wait for the next film because they’re not on a fixed salary.

I don’t start a film with the heroine but with the cinema subject. If there is a woman in the story, she has to be of a particular type. It’s not as if I start with Madhuri Dixit and then think what kind of film.

The conception of background music is changing. You use less and less of it these days.

It was only after Pather Panchali had some success at home that I decided to do a second part. But I didn’t want to do the same kind of film again, so I made a musical.

When I write an original story I write about people I know first-hand and situations I’m familiar with. I don’t write stories about the nineteenth century.

I’ve made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation.

Sometimes a director is making three films. Perhaps he is shooting a film in Madras and a film in Bombay and he can’t leave Madras as some shooting has to be done, so he directs by telephone. The shooting takes place. On schedule.

I mix Indian instruments with Western instruments all the time.

At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music.

The only solutions that are ever worth anything are the solutions that people find themselves.

Society’s future will depend on a continuous improvement program for the human character. And what will that future bring? I do not know, but it will be exciting.

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in it’s gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.

Life is about balance. Be kind, but don’t let people abuse you. Trust, but don’t be deceived. Be content, but never stop improving yourself.

There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.

Progress is not achieved by luck or accident, but by working on yourself daily.

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.

The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.