Salman Khan

Don't waste inspiration

I enjoy the process of composing music. The first time I hear a song, it has to bring a smile to my lips. You have to tap your feet and be able to sing the song.

In the past, I had a knee-jerk approach to work, and it showed on screen. I was doing movies for the wrong reasons - trying to juggle dates, do too many guest appearances, take up projects under pressure or for emotional reasons.

I no longer do a film for the wrong reasons. I have to be convinced ethically and morally. Both the director and I have to be on the same page. There are just five songs in most films these days, and they have to be amazing. There has to be a twist in the screenplay. The editing has to be crisp. Your hard work should show, but effortlessly.

The older you get, the better you have to look, the higher you have to kick, the harder you have to work.

I was close to getting married a long time ago. But it didn't happen, and since then it has not been happening. It is jinxed, and I am very happy. I hope this jinx continues.

I feel blessed that I haven't seen or felt real pain to be immune to it. But I am dreading the time it comes. I feel blessed to have everything going fine. My parents' health is good, my brothers are well-settled, I have a great brother-in-law and my own career is doing fine. I hope and pray that I am fit and fine always.

People are patronizing the theatres with renewed enthusiasm - there is an entire picnic-like attitude when families go out to see movies, which is a very good sign. They want to see larger-than-life characters on the big screen and not just watch movies on television or on DVDs.

In a traditional classroom, the spread between the fastest and slowest students grows over time, [and so] putting them all in one class cohort eventually makes it exceedingly difficult to avoid either completely boring the fast students or completely losing the slow ones. Most school systems address this by... putting the "fastest" students in "advanced" or "gifted" class... and the slowest students into "remedial" classes. It seems logical... except for the fact that it creates a somewhat permanent intellectual and social division between students.