I grew up in a small town in India, but through books I knew the world.

Making films is about having absolute and foolish confidence; the challenge for all of us is to have the heart of a poet and the skin of an elephant.

If we don't tell our own stories, no one else will.

Americans are not used to being bombed in their beds, but if you come from anywhere outside America, it's not highly unusual.

You know, the sad thing of post-9/11, which was of course horrific, was that the city in which I felt completely at home for two decades, suddenly people like us - brown people - were looked at as the 'Others.'

Post 9/11, so much has changed in New York that it does not give you that homely feeling which it did before.

We have three generations at home, including my father-in-law. I keep a very low profile, and a lot of things I do are very much with the family in mind. I have actually made films with the family around me.