“I really believe musical form will go on. There’s got to be a way of making musical form in cinema live again.”

Hurt him. Hurt him and save him

Trust yourself that you can do it and get it

All good, clean stories are melodrama, it’s just the set of devices that determines how you show or hide it.

I grew up around jazz. I love jazz.

Fitzgerald coined the phrase the ‘Jazz Age,’ and now we’re living in the Hip-Hop Age.

The cold-audition process is not a science, so I ignore that.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself

Everything I make starts very personally.

A life lived in fear is a life half lived.

I do find walking is fundamental to my creative process.

My wife is the fact-checker, I’m in the story telling business.

I feel a kinship with anyone who feels that their road, their life or who they really are is not good enough. I really relate to that.

It’s pretty hard to get mugged in Manhattan.

At a very young age I was allowed to go into the cinema and watch adult films.

If Paris is a city of lights, Sydney is the city of fireworks.

The ugly duckling is a misunderstood universal myth. It’s not about turning into a blonde Barbie doll or becoming what you dream of being; it’s about self-revelation, becoming who you are.

Cinema, heir of alchemy, last of an erotic science.

In the Indian film industry, especially those of us who are in mainstream cinema, we invariably play a typical hero’s role.

The one-word cinema wasn’t possible for me anymore. I’d hit a wall, a dead end. Therefore I thought I’d turn back.

I believe there’s only good cinema and bad cinema.

I didn’t go to the cinemas a lot as a kid.

Unfortunately, cinema critics are very few in America, 400-500 people, but there are more critics of Iran.

People have curiosity, they have intelligence, they have interest in understanding their peers. But producers and directors of cinema have decided that the seats in the theaters have been made to transform people’s minds to lazy minds.

The Iranian government as a whole has no relationship with my films. They’re not particularly interested, perhaps this kind of cinema is not very interesting to them.