There's been too much attention on marketing. Can't we just talk about the paintings?

I wanted to show painting paintings first, then the plate paintings; now I can show that I've sort of freed myself from stylistic inhibitions.

My early paintings weren't that good - I was very influenced by Francis Bacon. But there was a kind of intensity there. And however influenced they may have been by other people, even my earliest paintings were recognisably my own.

I'm not mannerist. I don't think I'm interested in mannerism. If I ever use it in a way, or if manner is like some kind of product of certain sorts of usage of different kinds of materials, then it's about involution or turning in on that.

The movie [Miral] is not pro-Palestinian. It's about Palestinians. It's a Palestinian story, written by a Palestinian person. I don't know anybody else that could have done that

When I'm making a movie, I don't like to know what's going to happen next. I like to watch something and be surprised all the time, and just not know, and let it take me wherever.

I think it was so unfair that people attacked Freida Pinto for being an Indian, playing a Palestinian.