Director Quotes

I don't think violence on film breeds violence in life. Violence in life breeds violence in films.

The same characters that keep reappearing, bigger than life, find their own integrity in doing what they do the way they do it, even if it causes their own deaths.

If there ever was a religious war full of terror, it was the crusades. But you can't blame Christianity because a few adventurers did this. That's my message.

I made the film to bring the story of Islam, the story of 700 million of people, to the West.

Beside all this I think there was something personal, being Muslim myself who lived in the west I felt that it was my obligation my duty to tell the truth about Islam. It is a religion that has a 700 million following, yet it's so little known about it which surprised me.

I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the ones that ultimately end up happening.

I think you have a passion and an obsession for something when it's not necessarily ubiquitous.

I think when you're 10 years old, it's too much to see something with the threat of death in every episode. Kids are better left naive about certain things.

I think that even if you're wondering if two characters are ever going to kiss, drawing out the inevitability is part of the fun. Whatever the genre happens to be.

I mean, my dad's a television producer, and I knew I could get a job as an assistant or a reader with one of his friends, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do.

I love working with the right actor, and if the right actor happens to be unknown, that should be allowed, too, I think.

I love the idea of anthropomorphizing machines. I love the idea of taking technology and giving it a personality.

I love recording music.

I love movies with spectacle but spectacle can be a performance, it doesn't have to be a creature.

I hope to make movies that are so small they don't need to make anything to be profitable.

I have nothing against 3-D in theory. But I've also never run to the movies because something's in 3-D.

I have no style. There are certain people who just have a visual sense that defines their work. You could probably watch 30 seconds of anything they do and you'll know exactly who directed it. I don't have that skill.

I hate to look at the stuff I've written and consider what it means or why I do it.

I find that it's hard to fully examine one's life and not have faith be part of the discussion.

I feel like obviously the standard for what TV looks like changes all the time.

I don't try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female.

I don't think I have a signature.

I believe in anything that will engage the audience and make the story more effective.

I am lucky, I'm the first to admit that.

As a kid, 'Star Wars' was much more my thing than 'Star Trek' was.

As a director/writer/producer, all you ever want is to work with actors who make you look better, who make the work you do seem as good as it can be and even better than it is.

All the times I've been lucky enough to be a part of a show that's actually gotten on the air, it's always that same mixture of excitement and utter fear.

All I know is that I've made some big screw-ups, and I've done some things that have done all right. I just keep trying to learn from the mistakes I've made.

We live in an age of instant knowledge. And there's almost a sense of entitlement to that.

When I was a kid, it was a huge insult to be a geek. Now it's a point of pride in a weird way.