No story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old.

If bigots behave like bigots, it's not a huge surprise.

Many of us didn't believe in the image of bin Laden as a wandering Old Man of the Mountains, living on plants and insects in an inhospitable cave somewhere on the porous Pakistan-Afghan border.

In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.

I think people direct good films when they feel personal to them, not because it's a famous book or something. It has to something move over that and somehow become personal to the director.

I do think that there is such a thing as human nature, and that the things that we have in common are perhaps greater than the things that divide us.

I remember when I was young, many cities in the Muslim world were cosmopolitan cities with a lot of culture.