“Syria is geographically and politically in the middle of the Middle East. That is why we are in contact with most of the problems forever, let us say, whether directly or indirectly.”

As we see now the American officials, they say something in the morning and they do the opposite in the evening. So, you cannot judge those people according to what they say. You cannot take them at their words, to be frank.

When our interests matched, the Americans have been good to us, and when the interests differed, they wanted us to mold ourselves to them, which we refused.

Any strike will be as direct support to Al-Qaeda offshoot that’s called Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. You’re right about this. It’s going to be direct support.

It’s not religious war, but Al-Qaeda always use religions, Islam – actually, as a pretext and as a cover and as a mantle for their war and for their terrorism and for their killing and beheading and so on.

Actually, the terrorists have been killing our people since the beginning of this crisis two years and a half ago, and the Syrian people wanted the government and the state institutions and the army and the police to defend them, and that’s what happened.

[The Jews] tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad.

Actually, he gave false evidence [of chemical weapons]. In this case,[John] Kerry didn’t even present any evidence. He talked “we have evidence” and he didn’t present anything. Not yet, nothing so far ; not a single shred of evidence.

If there is any change regarding that hope, we should ask the Syrian people, not anyone else in the world.

You look at [terrorists] faces, they look foreigners, but where are they coming from ? How precise this estimate is difficult to tell, but definitely the majority are Al-Qaeda.

Whether [Turkey] is a NATO country or not, it doesn’t have the right to invade any other country according to the international law or to any other moral value.

When you use an armament, you use it to defend the civilians. You kill terrorists in order to defend civilians. That’s the natural role of any army in the world.

That the rebels or the terrorists used the chemical weapons in northern Aleppo five months ago [in 2013].

If you don’t win and the terrorists win, Syria wouldn’t exist anymore.

No doubt that the U.S. is a super-power capable of conquering a relatively small country, but is it able to control it?

Nobody knows [who they are] because when [terrorists] are dead and they are killed, they don’t have any ID.

Opposition is different from terrorism. Opposition is a political movement.

I don’t believe in the theory that the United States is reducing its presence in the Middle East.

I dont see a lot of movies that portray the East Village as well as I think they can.

You know, by 1936, Hitler was already talking very loudly about his desire to expand to the east.

Mussolini, in 1935, went and then in the next year, conquered Ethiopia, acquiring himself a colony.

The custom is often noticed in the Old Testament, and still prevails in the east, and in some of the newly discovered South Sea Islands.

The guys I grew up with, my cinematic heroes, have always been men of few words, but of action. Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach.

I got a little house in East L.A. and did the gardening. I was doing some acting here and there, doing my own thing… getting back to reality.

D’you think I picked the East Side like Columbus picked America?