I'd like to do a film in Canada, but it's too difficult. National Film Board funding takes too long, and there's too much paperwork; by the time the film is approved the topic is dead and gone.

It doesn't matter who you are or where you come from - if you put quality work out there, it will be appreciated.

What good is my parents' wealth and education and upbringing if I'm not contributing to the world?

As filmmakers, you're not working on just one project, you're producing something, directing something, shooting something, and so it becomes hard to do it by yourself.

I became a documentary filmmaker because I wanted to make socially conscious films. I never studied filmmaking - everything I have learned has been on the field.

I hope I can make Pakistan proud by bringing home an Oscar.

By bringing the voices of the ordinary people faced with extraordinary challenges to television screens around the world, I hope to affect change in one community at a time.

The Pakistani government and its allies must overhaul their policies in Pakistan.

An Academy Award nomination is stuff dreams are made of.

Don't give up your dreams.

I'm generally quite an angry person, and I like to channel my anger toward something creative.

Truly, a life in constant pain is the life of the damned.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.

In all my science fiction movies, I try to blend the familiar with the futuristic so as not to be too off putting to the audience. There is always something familiar they can grab onto.

Consistency is the quality of a stagnant mind.

Thus art is not an object, it is an experience.

Maybe when they no longer receive Sierra magazine in their mailboxes, journalists will understand how campaign finance reform abridges free speech.

Being a successful trader also takes courage: the courage to try, the courage to fail, the courage to succeed, and the courage to keep on going when the going gets tough.

It is all very well for you, who have probably never seen any spiritual manifestations, to talk as you do; but if you had seen what I have witnessed you would hold a different opinion.