You do not see with the lens of the eye. You seen through that, and by means of that, but you see with the soul of the eye.
Every religion has had people going out and killing in the name of it. But that's not what religion is.
Being an African filmmaker, Africa is what's important for me. If I were to shot a film in France or elsewhere it would only be because the story that was being told was something that concerned me, and that really called me or needed to be shown on the screen.
The role of the artist is to be the witness of life, timbuktu.
I'm the only Mauritanian filmmaker so it wouldn't make sense to make a film in France. I could shoot outside of my own country if the story was something that called for it. Africa really has to be the reason for me to make a new film.
Music is one of the most beautiful things in the world. It's universal.
Islam never tells people to go out and kill other people.
World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.
Golf cannot be played in anger, or in any mood of emotiional excess. Half the golf balls struck by amateurs are hit if not in rage surely in bewilderment, or gloom, or in cynicism, or even hysterically - all of those emotional excesses must be contained by the professional. Which is why balance is one of the essential ingredients of golf. Professionals invariably trudge phlegmatically around the course - whatever emotions are seething within - with the grim yet placid and bored look of cowpokes, slack-bodied in their saddles, who have been tending the same herd for two months.
To get a job where the only thing you have to do in your career is to make people laugh-well, its the best job in the world.
I'm a Capricorn, actually.