Quotes by Mira Nair

“I know what its like to be in one place and dream of another. I also know what its like to feel that nostalgia is a fairly useless thing because it is stasis.”

“I guess that would be Indian, in a way. We are used to no privacy. We are used to a lot of people in a room, sleeping on mattresses.”

“I like to be unabashed, which is an Indian trait, both emotionally and visually. Its important to have a circus to play with.”

“People ask me this, but Ive never sought to be on an A-list. Ive done my own thing and my own thing has thankfully now brought me an audience.”

“Its an extraordinarily funny and wonderful screenplay. It makes you laugh from the first page.”

“The Austen novels [had] young ladies just sitting waiting to be proposed to, for Gods sake. Becky had no time for that. She was born on the other side of the tracks, like most of us are, and she had to make her way.”

“[Reese Witherspoon] was the first, and ... only person that I thought who would play it, for many reasons. Number one, an actor who has to play from 17 to 35 and be convincing in both ranges. And two, we all know her extraordinary comic guile and her wit ... but she also has that irresistibility in her, that total appeal.”

“Thats the joy I have as a filmmaker, thats what I love to do. Im very fortunate.”

“The media do not allow us to understand the history of what led to 9/11. The knowledge of what we are living in now is not given to the American public.”

“Its only at this age that I can say the word art without flinching.”

The dignity of everyday life - the beauty of it, the attitude of it - is what I live around. And it is never on screen, and it is certainly never associated with Africa. If we see Africa at all, it is always used as a backdrop: a big blob of a continent rather than a specific street or a country or a place.

We have to realize only in communication, in real knowledge, in real reaching out, can there be an understanding that theres humanity everywhere, and thats what Im trying to do.

Christmas lights may be the loneliest thing for me, especially if you mix them up with reindeers and sleighs. I feel alone. I feel isolated. I feel I do not belong.

I love the idea that it doesnt take one person only to achieve your potential. It takes a village, it takes a community, a street, a teacher, a mother.

I listen to Ustad Vilayat Khans Raga Khamaj and Raga Jaijaiwanti virtually every morning, a lot of Abdullah Ibrahim, Michael Kiwanuka, Savages, and contemporary Ugandan pop.

I think, in terms of activism associated with my films, be it Salaam Baalak Trust or Maisha, taking the idea of cinema as a way to change people, I feel heartened. I am glad that we have impacted thousands of lives.

You know, the sad thing of post-9/11, which was of course horrific, was that the city in which I felt completely at home for two decades, suddenly people like us - brown people - were looked at as the Others.

My family is almost exactly like the one in Monsoon Wedding. We are very open, fairly liberal, loud people.

It gave me a lot of pleasure and pride that 90 percent of the crew for Monsoon Wedding, and most of my film, are women. We get the work done, you know, much lesser play of ego... And I really believe in harmony, I believe in working in a spirit of egolessness and that the film is bigger than all of us.