Germans try to categorize films: in a comedy, you just laugh and in a drama, you're not allowed to laugh. I don't believe in that, sometimes we laugh and cry in the same hour.

I always listen to music when I write, I need a rhythm to write.

As a director, you can transform your vision more with the music.

Whenever I'm making a feature film, I wish I were filming a documentary, because making feature films is so stressful. It happens every time.

Film is a two dimensional thing - it goes up and down and left to right but if you put that music into that two dimensional medium, it became like a third, fourth, and fifth dimension, I really believe in that.

I like it when actors depart from the script to find their characters.

Maybe every two films you need to do documentary to tell what you really want to tell and not be limited by the medium. With documentary you don't create the reality you have to hunt the reality.

The Turks who live here in Germany don't get their information from German media. They read Turkish newspapers and watch Turkish television. A sort of parallel media world has developed in Germany, especially as a result of technological advances like satellite TV and the internet.

When an audience is laughing, that's opening their souls somehow, and when you have an audience with an open soul, it's much better to hit them with a knife.

I shot many scenes of Hamburg, albums full of postcard motifs, and I discarded almost all of them. I ride my bike through Hamburg every day. I go shopping here, I go to the doctor - and yet I no longer have the eye for telling stories about this damn city, even though I love it.