"Sitting in the darkness of the cinema, I got to see another world. This imaginary world was a refuge for many of us. Of course, the films were controlled and censored by the regime. But I still thought, around this time, that maybe making films would be good for me. I thought of expressing myself through this medium, and of doing something for the Kurds. The options were clear: either I'd work as a lawyer under the Baath regime or make movies independently."

“I'm not saying the 1970s was a golden age - I don't believe such a thing exists in art . . . It would be like talking about a golden age of science. But it's true that those were slightly more ideological times, and the relevance of artists wasn't established by their CVs but by their work.”

Source : Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

“My father was adopted. He grew up in the Italian household.”

Source : "Being Black and "Difficult" in Hollywood". Interview with Ishmael Reed, www.counterpunch.org. September 24, 2010.

“I was a strange child. I was the kid with funny hair listening to dodgy music [...] I'd come in with my hoodie and skate-shoes, with purple hair under the hood. I got away with it because I spent all my time in the art room, so they figured I was 'artistic'. I was that kind of kid, listening to Green Day and the Deftones and all that kind of thing.”

“I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was in any way artistic or a potential mentor to a budding writer, and yet this is what I became.”

“The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.”

“What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.”

Source : Nelson Mandela (2011). “Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations”, p.227, Pan Macmillan

“I was assigned to a medical unit and was part of a group receiving men returning from theater headed to hospital care, many forever maimed with life-altering wounds. It made a strong impression because wounded men and body bags come back to home districts, not Washington, D.C., and accordingly, there is no more sacred vote than those surrounding war where life hangs in the balance.”

Source : "Congress at War". www.politico.com. July, 2015.

“Not liberty but duty is the condition of existence.”

Source : Mathilde Blind (2014). “George Eliot”, p.11, The Floating Press