Mira Nair Quotes

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Mira Nair

Profession : Director

Birth : October 15, 1957

They say now in America that final cut doesn't mean anything. As Harvey Weinstein said to some film-maker, 'You can have final cut. I'll open your film in Arkansas.'

Mira Nair

I am an independent film-maker first and foremost. I have always cut my own cloth.

Mira Nair

It's only at this age that I can say the word 'art' without flinching.

Mira Nair

I am still attracted to stories about people who are considered to be on the outside of society. I still seek inspiration from those stories.

Mira Nair

I grew up in a small town in India, but through books I knew the world.

Mira Nair

I often begin movies with music in my head; it's a very important dimension to me. Not just the music itself, but how to use music in film: when and how and subtlety. I don't like to be too sweet in my stories, and I like the abrasive clang, the contrasting of sounds and cultures.

Mira Nair

In America, we have so many movies and so much media about the Islamic world, the sub-continental world, but it's not a conversation, it's a monologue. It's always from one point of view. 'If we don't tell our own stories, no one will tell them' is my mantra.

Mira Nair

My films, no one else will do.

Mira Nair

Middle-class Pakistani cultural life is what I've seen, what I know - they're not all screaming faceless mullahs. It's disturbing that in American films, the character on the other side is not even named.

Mira Nair

I look for the humanity in people, however big the politics or oppressive the situation may be, whether it's subsumed within a human being or between two human beings. I want to help us hold a mirror to ourselves.

Mira Nair

Humility is not a trait I often associate with America.

Mira Nair

Never take no for answer, and try to make films that turn you on.

Mira Nair

For seven years, I made films in the cinema verite tradition - photographing what was happening without manipulating it. Then I realised I wanted to make things happen for myself, through feature films.

Mira Nair

Marriage of attraction is a gamble anyway, so you might as well marry into a family that is similar to your own, and make that much less of an adjustment. But the 'love marriage', as it is called, is equally common in India now. But it would be interesting to do a comparison of what would work better. Marriage is hard work, and it is a gamble.

Mira Nair

Americans are not used to being bombed in their beds, but if you come from anywhere outside America, it's not highly unusual.

Mira Nair

I started to make my own films, however small and however independent they were, from the beginning. And so, even though I was nobody, I was always the master of my own work.

Mira Nair

In our house we say 'adolescence' is a western word. We don't believe in it.

Mira Nair

It took me three years to learn to dress in the American way, especially in winter. That was just like me. I barely wear socks even now.

Mira Nair

We have three generations at home, including my father-in-law. I keep a very low profile, and a lot of things I do are very much with the family in mind. I have actually made films with the family around me.

Mira Nair

I think there's a level of ignorance, when, in the callowness of youth, you imagine that you are inventing the world for the first time. You imagine that your parents don't know what it feels like to fall in love.

Mira Nair