I have not walked away from Hollywood. I'm walking away from the way I personally did business in Hollywood. The budget of whatever movie I do needs to be efficient; it needs to consider what kind of resources we're using and how to be as responsible as possible.

I didn't want to hear the usual answers about what's wrong because I believe these are symptoms: global warming, genocide, hunger, poverty, war, environmental crisis. If we can identify the root cause, we can change our ways.

My dad's half-Lebanese, my mom is full Lebanese. I'm three-quarters Lebanese. Irish-Lebanese.

The mystics will tell you death is perfectly safe. A violent act will beget a violent act; it is simply a law.

The bike accident caused me to start talking about spiritual truths. This accident - where I faced my own death - compelled me to talk about these truths and try to make a movie about them.

Nothing in nature takes more than what it needs

Nature is very clear on this. In fact, there's one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks everyday. Now this is a law that's evolved over billions of years and the law is this: nothing in nature takes more than it needs. A redwood tree doesn't take all of the soil's nutrients, just what it needs to grow. A lion doesn't kill every gazelle, just one. We have a term for something in the body when it takes more than its share. We call it cancer.