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" I came from the school of cinema verite documentaries, which was: Do not manipulate reality as it was happening but create a narrative in the editing room. "

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" I don't think boldness should be associated with showing off skin. It's not the basis of boldness. "

" Post 9/11, so much has changed in New York that it does not give you that homely feeling which it did before. "

" My close friends call me the bulldozer who never says no. I have never not made a film. "

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

" I'm inspired by people that are marginal. I'm excited by their resilience. "

" We never see the fancy schools with the blazers and ties in films about Africa! But, in fact, we too have class and elitism. "

" Humility is not a trait I often associate with America. "

" The film-school mantra is that if you don't tell your own stories, nobody will. "

" Middle-class Pakistani cultural life is what I've seen, what I know - they're not all screaming faceless mullahs. It's disturbing that in American films, the character on the other side is not even named. "

" Truth is much stranger than fiction and, often, much more powerful. "

" From Vietnam's 'Deer Hunter' to Iraq, films are never about the person who has had his house destroyed. "

" Katwe is fifteen minutes from my home. It's entirely about knowing it from the inside. For instance, the incredible vibrancy of style. Kampala is the center of used clothing in the world. Everyone dresses in secondhand clothes, but they look astonishing for it. "

" They say now in America that final cut doesn't mean anything. As Harvey Weinstein said to some film-maker, 'You can have final cut. I'll open your film in Arkansas.' "

" New York City is home to so many people from so many places and the uniqueness of it is that you never feel a foreigner. English is almost hardly ever heard in the subway. In fact, it's weird. "

" For seven years, I made films in the cinema verite tradition - photographing what was happening without manipulating it. Then I realised I wanted to make things happen for myself, through feature films. "

" In America, we have so many movies and so much media about the Islamic world, the sub-continental world, but it's not a conversation, it's a monologue. It's always from one point of view. 'If we don't tell our own stories, no one will tell them' is my mantra. "

" Christmas lights may be the loneliest thing for me, especially if you mix them up with reindeers and sleighs. I feel alone. I feel isolated. I feel I do not belong. "

" I'm not interested in passion and love for their own sake - without the struggle of life, they're just fluff. "

" We want the diversity of the world that is around us represented both in front of and behind the camera, and on our screens as a result. "

" Every film is a political act; it's how you see the world. "

" If we don't tell our own stories, no one else will. "

" With Vietnam, the Iraq War, so many American films about war are almost always from the American point of view. You almost never have a Middle Eastern character by name with a story. "

" I am Indian, and my home is Kampala. My world is already diverse. But films are financed by those who want to see themselves on screen, and it is a white male world. Still, it does feel like America is waking up. Let's hope it's the start of an avalanche. "

" Truth is more peculiar than fiction. Life is really a startling place. "

" You've got to understand that in Bollywood, every actor is an instrument, and yet a human being. They come to the set with a set agenda, believing, 'This is who I am, this is what I want, and no, I am not going to become that character you want me to.' "

" I think there's a level of ignorance, when, in the callowness of youth, you imagine that you are inventing the world for the first time. You imagine that your parents don't know what it feels like to fall in love. "

" India somehow constantly rivets and inspires me, and I feel very relieved to have come from this country which has a very 'lifeist' approach to living fully, no matter what one has or doesn't have. "

" I know what it's like to be in one place and dream of another. I also know what it's like to feel that nostalgia is a fairly useless thing because it is stasis. "

" 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.' "

" My family is vital to me - just the sense of being surrounded by no pretension. "