I don't like to be feared, and I can't work in conflict, I'm very bad with conflict. I try to avoid it, it paralyzes me.

I've never felt that my job was difficult because I'm a woman. It's a difficult job regardless, and it's even more difficult in Lebanon because there's no film industry. There's no structure, funding, or institutions for filmmakers.

Lebanon is not only burning buildings and people crying in the street. When you say 'Lebanon,' especially to foreigners, that's the first thing they think of.

It's very important to me to understand myself and my place in the world. My films help me with that, and the more people see them, the more I am making a statement.

I've been proud to be the chair of the Stop the War coalition, proud to be associated with the Stop the War coalition.

The west has a great deal to answer for in the Middle East, from Britain's belated empire-building after the First World War to the US and British policy that condemns modern Iraq to the material and social squalor of a half-century ago.

Readers want to have the confidence that you understand the era in which the book is set, so for 'The Perfumer's Secret,' I needed to know everything about the First World War from a French perspective. I had to understand those people and that town in 1914.

I did have a life before the Animals, and I'm trying constantly to prove that I have a life after the Animals. People tend to forget that I was the frontman with War for two years. People sort of have compartmental memories.