Indian - Director | October 15, 1957 -
Never take no for answer, and try to make films that turn you on.
Mira Nair
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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.
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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.
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Americans are not used to being bombed in their beds, but if you come from anywhere outside America, it's not highly unusual.
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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.
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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.
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In our house we say 'adolescence' is a western word. We don't believe in it.
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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.
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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.
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Post 9/11, so much has changed in New York that it does not give you that homely feeling which it did before.
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I've loved 'Vanity Fair' since I was 16 years old. You know, we're all colonial hangovers in India, steeped in English literature. It is one of these novels that I read under the covers at my convent boarding school in Simla.
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I came from the school of cinema verite documentaries, which was: Do not manipulate reality as it was happening but create a narrative in the editing room.
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