The great majority of Baghdad is a slum - a lot of it's new, but it's still slum. It's usually this concrete-block, one-room design with a door and a window, arranged one-up, one-down, often with a shop with nothing in it on the first floor, and then a one-room apartment above it. There's street after street after street of that stuff.
First of all there is always that artistic challenge of creating something. Or the particular experience to take slum life in that period and make something out of it in the form of a book. And then I felt some kind of responsibility to my family.
The slum is the measure of civilization.
I am aware it's easy and may be fashionable to pose with a slum child, and the irony of getting the media along means that it can come across as disingenuous. But you take these things on board, and you hope you mean it whenever you get stuck into something.
The majority of them give the impression of being men who have been drafted into the job during a period of martial law and are only waiting for the end of the emergency to get back to a really congenial occupation such as slum demolition or debt collecting.
I didn't say I wouldn't go into ghetto areas. I've been in many of them and to some extent I would say this; if you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all.
The fighter loses more than his pride in the fight; he loses part of his future. He's a step closer to the slum he came from.
We are seeing a changed Mumbai, but having showcased Dharavi in 'Slum Dog Millionaire' brought shame and disgrace to our city. Whenever the firangs visit Mumbai, they must visit Dharavi; it has become a sightseeing spot. However, I feel saddened about it.
'Slumdog' was my first movie, and I had never been to India before - I was just a teenager in the U.K. with my headphones and my Nike shoes. What did I know about growing up in a slum?
When I was 16, I made some little 35mm documentaries about the poor in London. I went round Notting Hill, which was a real slum in the 1950s, shooting film.