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.

I want to question what the outside is and who defines it. I often find those that are considered to be on the outside extremely inspiring.

My family is almost exactly like the one in 'Monsoon Wedding'. We are very open, fairly liberal, loud people.

I am an independent film-maker first and foremost. I have always cut my own cloth.

In our house we say 'adolescence' is a western word. We don't believe in it.

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.'

Every frame and every scene has to have an intention.