Quotes from Imtiaz Ali

I just write characters, and somehow they happen to be a boy and a girl. When the story is put together, and their characters interwoven, they do end up together somehow.

I used to love Kapil Dev and, like any schoolboy, wanted to become a cricketer till I started dreaming of making movies.

I want to direct what I feel is interesting - not what is supposed to be my zone.

I come from a middle class background. I have travelled a lot by trains and have lived in the world. It is a world I cannot get away from; I would not even want to.

I myself got married at a very young age. It has always intrigued me because marriage is very synthetic in an otherwise natural world.

I'm a big foodie. Hyderabadi cuisine is amazing, and the kind of mutton dishes available at some restaurants in the Old City is incredible.

Especially on unexpected journeys, you have time; you can figure certain deeper things out, like who you are and what you want. That's why I enjoy journeys.

I am a keen observer of my own films; I also try to discover myself through the movies I make.

I enjoy looking beyond the obvious and look at the stories happening all around me - you kind of formulate things in your mind and get excited about them.

When you write a story, it just flows and you don't control it. It's subconscious.

Usually, you lose interest in a story beyond a certain point. But with 'Highway,' there was something very subtle, yet something very influential. I intended 'Highway' to be the first film that I ever made. Didn't happen.

The story of 'Highway' is completely about travel. It is about the fascination of travel to an extent that I don't want to even reach the destination and also being away from society gives you a certain view of the society, so that was the intention of the film.

My father did irrigation jobs, and I would sometimes accompany him, and that gave me a taste of what was going on in the innards of India.