I always listen to music when I write, I need a rhythm to write.

Film is a two dimensional thing - it goes up and down and left to right but if you put that music into that two dimensional medium, it became like a third, fourth, and fifth dimension, I really believe in that.

As a director, you can transform your vision more with the music.

Germans try to categorize films: in a comedy, you just laugh and in a drama, you're not allowed to laugh. I don't believe in that, sometimes we laugh and cry in the same hour.

I like it when actors depart from the script to find their characters.

I shot many scenes of Hamburg, albums full of postcard motifs, and I discarded almost all of them. I ride my bike through Hamburg every day. I go shopping here, I go to the doctor - and yet I no longer have the eye for telling stories about this damn city, even though I love it.

The Turks who live here in Germany don't get their information from German media. They read Turkish newspapers and watch Turkish television. A sort of parallel media world has developed in Germany, especially as a result of technological advances like satellite TV and the internet.