Societal good comes first for me.

I'm Indian. I care for our Motherland.

To live greatly, you have to risk greatly.

We can't deny the existence of caste in India. We have to live with it.

I have always wanted to be a gardener, and I love the time I spend in my garden.

I feel the superstardom is God-given. I don't know how Pawanism came. I find it strange.

I have been a depressed kid. I wanted to lead a quiet life, never wanted to be an actor.

Life is bigger than cinema. Cinema is just a part of life, so I never take success or failure seriously.

As a public personality, I keep things related to my children and partner to myself. They are private matters.

I never wanted to become an actor. I always wanted to be a farmer and dreamt of owning half an acre of agriculture land.

It's destiny that pushed me towards showbiz. I wanted to start off as a technician, but out of compulsion, I became an actor.

If I do not respond to some situation, my conscience kills me. I believe in permissible violence, not necessarily non-violence.

Many will call me an adventurer, and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his platitudes.

Nature, philosophy and social issues are the three things that always occupy my mind. You do not have any power over others but can only change yourself.

Politics organizes our lives. We can't disregard it. Politics has lot of muck, lot of dirt. But that doesn't mean you have to be away from it. It's ubiquitous.

For me, directing a film is like confining myself. I want to do something beyond direction. I can conceive stories, write screenplays, etc. That's better for me.

I don't believe in planning for things. I just want them to fall in place, unfold as they like. I never design things. I want films to choose me; I don't choose films.

I have a huge fan following in Bellary, and when they met me, they told me about their problems. I have seen mining done without proper safety measures and not taking environmental protection into account.

I certainly don't like to play a bad guy. There are no bad people. It's only shades of grey. Also, I am not a great actor who can transform completely into a totally different character for a movie. I am not a trained actor.

Indian cinema needs all ingredients like emotion, action, sentiment and humour; it's not easy. It's easy to make a Hollywood film, as it goes with a pattern. Our cinema needs a lot of commercial ingredients. That's why I don't do many films.

History and social sciences were my interests. I was always interested in knowing how societies get organized, why there is rich and poor divide, why there are classes. I was never apolitical. I think we are all political in a way. Politics decides our day-to-day life.

I wanted to remain a bachelor from the beginning, but I got married thrice, and I don't know why I did it. I think it's not easy to live with me because of my impatience and busy schedules. Sometimes my mother is unhappy about a few decisions I have taken, but it is completely personal, and I don't want to make it public.

There is a latent talent in everyone. I am nothing extraordinary just because I happen to be an actor. Everybody is extraordinary in his own way. One must identify one's own talent early on - one is not great merely when he gets recognized by others - and one doesn't become a nobody just because his talent is not widely known.

Right from my childhood, I have believed in a Supreme Power. I don't know whether it has form, or it is formless. I am a high school dropout. How come life has given me so much? It's not my intelligence, it's not my abilities. This understanding makes me scared even in success. I don't own my success. Neither do I own my failure.

Caste is a delicate issue. It's ubiquitous, and we are full of it. We should start to change things from individual level. But when you go to people and deny caste, they may not react favourably. I think if a decisive percentage of people, especially elites, start marrying out of their caste, we may see a casteless India in a generation's time.

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