In the theater there are 1,500 cameras rolling at the same time - in the cinema, only one.

The two things you cannot do effectively on stage are pray and copulate.

[I have a] fondness for telling stories, like the Arab storytellers on the marketplace. ... I will never grow tired of [telling] stories [and] I make the mistake of thinking that everyone has the same enthusiasm!

Why spend 18 hours watching someone else's war, when you know how it comes out? We win, and then have to buy all their cars.

If you've noticed that I don't use long takes, it's not because I don't like them, but because no one gives me the necessary means to treat myself to them. It's more economical to make one image, then this image and then that image, and try to control them later, in the editing studio.

I hate Woody Allen physically, I dislike that kind of man.

I can think of nothing that an audience won't understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world.