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I don't know that movies are important. But I know that stories are important. Movies may disappear. They've only been around, for God's sake, for the last hundred years... I think that it's the need to tell stories, and that people need to be told stories. It's the old sitting around the fire, you know.

Our films tremendously influence people. But at the same time, no one goes to the cinema to listen to lectures, so if you have an interesting story, and if you can showcase it as a film, and its messages are good, then it's like an icing on the cake: it shall be a superhit. And if I get those kind of films, I'll definitely want to work on it.

Film is our literature, so we should tell stories that are apropos of our culture, in that we can learn something about ourselves.

I like stories that have a social impact and social attributes to them. That's the whole reason we make films: to broaden our limited view of things and to see how life is evolving elsewhere.

I think that my films are basically family stories, beyond the fact that they are global and have political and social commentary.

I think that those are the things that you can uniquely do with film that are difficult to do anywhere else: they can bring a picture to life, give it a natural and historical context and make you feel that everything else is suddenly credible.

It's amazing what you can do without in terms of filmmaking when a story is really important.

I've always had the perspective that roles come into my life when I need them most and sort of teach me lessons. The same can be true of films, films are released into society to aid in a lesson, inspire people, comfort people.

The power of the story sheds a light and great perspective on well known facts. The power of cinema draws on that collective history.

Films don't always tell a story; some films can achieve effect just by being razzle-dazzle or rock n' roll. That's part of the fare that's out there. And that's okay. For me, I place more value on a story.