The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.
I prefer the countryside to cities. This is also true of my films: I have made more films in rural societies, and villages, than in towns.
I've benefited from the best of both societies and both cultures, East and West.
Both individuals and societies tell themselves stories to simplify and make sense of the messy chaos of reality.
Poverty is not the simple result of bad geography, bad culture, bad history. It's the result of us: of the ways that people choose to organize their societies.
I haven't read the 'Twilight' books, though I suppose, in general, I thought it might be fun to deflate all of the notions of vampire sexiness, secret societies, the idea that anyone could learn to divide the population of the world between fellow vampires and perishable food sources and expect to retain their humanity, etc.
Unlike settled, patriarchal societies such as classical Greece and Rome, where women stayed home to weave and mind children, the lives of nomadic steppe tribes centered on horses and archery.
Now it is time to make historic reassessments in order to transform our region into one of stability, freedom, prosperity, cultural revival and co-existence. In this new regional order there should be less violence and fewer barriers between countries, societies and sects.
China and the U.S. are two societies with very different attitudes towards opinion and criticism. In China, I am constantly under surveillance. Even my slightest, most innocuous move can - and often is - censored by Chinese authorities.
The simple facts of Chadian life - what it takes to survive in that kind of climate with nothing but a hut and some animals - stunned me. And this made me realize, perhaps for the first time, how easy my life was compared to those of people in less privileged societies.
