We lived in the provincial town of Ramat Gan where I spent most of my youth adjacent to the chess board.

It seemed like my professional life would take a more scientific route. I guess that plan started to become undone when, at the age of 17, I happened upon a screening of Alain Resnais' 'Hiroshima Mon Amour,' and it took my breath away.

I view every film as a commitment to undertake a long journey. I suppose this has to do with my need to leave no stone unturned, and sometimes to even dig deeper into the mine.

I view every film as a commitment to undertake a long journey.

When I talk about my artist parents, people imagine a bohemian environment and think, 'Aha, so that's where he gets it from!' But we were as white, straight, and middle-class as the next family on our white, straight, middle-class housing estate.

I come from a very blue-collar family, and a very hardworking family, and I think that my work ethic is maybe the thing that kept me on the straight and narrow.

Yahoo was Jerry Yang's baby. He did a great job creating the baby. Unfortunately, some of the key executives after the foundation of the company couldn't keep up with the technology innovation of the industry. They thought that Yahoo should become a media company.

It never occurred to me that I was important enough to have some politician go out of his way to silence me. I only found out about it in the '80s by accident - a broadcaster announced they received letters of commendation from the White House for having suppressed my music. My career was so highly impacted in the U.S. it will never recover.