This character in the film, these things that he says which sound like advice and wise things, they are very common for Orientals. It's all the tradition.

This is one of the factors that also made me very much want to make this film, apart from the fact that I loved it. If the boy hadn't been Jewish and the man hadn't been Muslim, it wouldn't have made any difference to the film. I don't think it's relevant, really.

He read his mind. He's a strange sort of man, isn't he? It's not just the advice and the wisdom that he has.

I love to be with my son and my grandchildren, like normal people. I have no particular idea of what I represent to other people. It's very mysterious to me. I don't understand it.

Making love? It's a communion with a woman. The bed is the holy table. There I find passion -- and purification.

To learn bad dialogue is so difficult and so boring, and to work with a stupid director who tells you to do the wrong thing, etcetera, it's just unbearable.

I had too many big passions in life and it gets in the way of work. You can't concentrate properly on the one thing.