I can get a better role in TV and work more constantly than I can waiting around for my friends in Canada to call me every four years - which they do - and I go up there and play a leading role.
I think it's something much bigger than just pro wrestling and the industry I work in. It's across all media. You look at Hollywood movies: there's not the Muslim hero or the guy who looks like me and has a name like mine who is portrayed in a positive manner or in a leading role. So, growing up, I didn't have a role model that looks like me.
I couldn't beat people with my strength; I don't have a hard shot; I'm not the quickest skater in the league. My eyes and my mind have to do most of the work.
The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step. So we must never neglect any work of peace within our reach, however small.
We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards it carefully. Meanwhile, idiots focus on marginal productivity hacks and gains while they leak out energy each passing day.
You have to find what makes you stable in the storm. Then, no matter what's happening round you, no matter what the hype or the publicity, you can still manage to make leaps in your work as an artist.
In 2008, I just decided that there will come a time when I am dead and gone, and I only have a body of work to show. That was when I did films like 'Last Lear' and Deepa Mehta's 'Heaven On Earth.' They were serious roles.
I don't want my learning curve to be stunted by just all of a sudden doing work all the time and not being careful about the work that I'm doing.
I went to work in accounting at Arthur Andersen. At one point, it was the creme de la creme. I wanted to work there because it looked like the hardest thing I could find, and I loved being on a steep learning curve. I progressed quickly, and two years out of college, I was managing a small team of people.
And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.
Most people I work with are older than me and the main thing I've learnt is that everyone is a dumb as an 18-year-old.
I'm still an English professor at Rice University here in Houston. They've been very generous in letting me on a very long leash to just work on 'The Passage' and its sequels.
My dad is really the reason I have this hard work ethic. I can fully remember him leaving home at 5 o'clock in the morning and not coming back until midnight.
I have a lot of nice Italian winter clothes that make me look like a sophisticated Lebanese professor, so my friend Robert and I go around pretending to be experts in Arabic politics. It doesn't work in the summer though. I don't have the right clothes.
For years, Lebanese have known that Palestinian camps like Nahr al-Barid and Ain al-Helwe - hopeless slums crowded with generations of disenfranchised Palestinian refugees who can't go home because of Israel, and can't work because of Lebanese laws - are awash with gunmen, criminals and, since the war in Iraq, al-Qaida inspired jihadists.
LeBron James, I just love watching him play. I love his work ethic and all the things he stands for.
I have so much respect for athletes like LeBron James. I get motivation from them because I know how many hours they put into it. It takes a lot of hard work and drive.
How are we going to make painters by lecturing to them? We are going to make questioners, doubters, and talkers. We are going to make painters by painting ourselves, and by showing the paintings of others. By working frankly from our convictions, we are going to make them work frankly from theirs.
I never really felt like my age stopped people from wanting to work with me. I was speaking at conferences and lecturing at universities at 18, and I think that was mainly because web developing and management was a really young industry.
The re-releases have more than doubled the amount of Led Zeppelin work out there. I wanted it done authoritatively, 'cause I was the one writing the stuff; I was the producer and mixer. I don't think it's any more weird than writing your autobiography.
