I never made films like kind of career moves, like making this film in order to make that film in order to end up in Hollywood.

We made a film about the need for silence and withdrawal... and here we are at the epicentre of noise and excitement. Life is full of surprises.

I'm a pretty chaotic person, but I'm also a perfectionist. It's a very unfortunate mix.

I usually make films about what's on my mind at any given time.

I never work from the script. I get the script more or less.

It's always a good starting point to tell a story that has many layers.

The changes are part of my writing process. When I write, I imagine scenes. I write things down. I take photographs. I do some casting. I rewrite. It's a permanent making or remaking.

'Ida' is about humanity, about guilt and forgiveness. It's not a film that deals with an issue as such. It's more universal.

For me, good films and good books are irreducible to a lesson. You can't just kind of translate them into one statement. On the contrary, the more you do that, the less wisdom in art there is.

Have the courage to do what you're not ready to do.

Genetic design is something we can use to fight the lack of sustainability we humans are forcing on the earth's environment.

We need more science, but what we especially need is science fiction.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was the quarter from behind the ear gag. He would never put the time in.

I have an ego like anybody else, but I don't need to be stoked by going before the public all the time.

I didn't really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college.

I think Peter Dickinson is hands down the best stylist as a writer and the most interesting storyteller in my genre.

Processed pig is white trash meat. Some people call it Spam.

I see a poem as a multi-coloured strip behind peeling plaster, in separate, shining fragments.

With the withering of the rose, and with each fallen petal, Allah is reminding us that everything here is passing away. He is reminding us that nothing in this world will remain, except for Allah.