[on Indian art] Indian art is not one thing. Indian art is so many different schools and styles. (Nevertheless) I think lyricism, the love of nature, the symbolic aspect of art (like showing rain in a few lines of dots in a Rajput miniature) the looking for the essence in natural forms and human forms, and then going for the essence rather than the surface - that I think is primarily what distinguishes Indian art from Western art. Not just Indian art but Eastern art in general. Chinese and Japanese art also, if you come to think about it, have the same qualities as Indian art.

[on whether or not he is a humanist] Not really. I can't think of being anything else but what is represented by my films. I am not conscious of being a humanist. It's simply that I am interested in human beings. I would imagine that everyone who makes a film is to some extent interested in human beings... I'm slightly irritated (laughs) by this constant reference to humanism in my work - I feel that there are other elements also. It's not just about human beings. It's also a structure, a form, a rhythm, a face, a temple, a feeling for light and shade, composition, and a way of telling a story.

For the cinema it's much better to be more concentrated in time. It's an instinctive feeling: I can't put it into words why I feel like that. The film's better if the period is a day or a week or fortnight or a month, so that nobody grows up: everybody's as they were in the beginning.