When I made my first film, Basquiat, I think one of the criticisms was that the way I work is episodic. Later, as people started to look at the movies, they started to realize that maybe that's my style. If I could do it better or another way, I guess I would.

In a certain way, my work had set me up to be against lots of things. If there wasn't some sort of sanction for it in the public world, it might have been...it wouldn't have been tolerated, because people don't want things to get shaken up.

I think it's good when people don't write good things about your work. I mean, what a great compliment it is to be called a charlatan.

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

We need to not be scared [of muslim], but understand each other. When you're around these people, you see they have much more in common than their differences.

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

I think, basically, I'm an abstract artist. I just think that that's not even an issue. I think everything's abstract.