I've never sought to be on an A-list. I've done my own thing and my own thing has thankfully now brought me an audience.

Mira Nair

Categorized in : Done Lists Audience

I love the idea that it doesn't take one person only to achieve your potential. It takes a village, it takes a community, a street, a teacher, a mother.

community mother teacher love

'No words - action' was the lesson my mother taught me: as artists, we have the privilege of holding a mirror to the world, to engage, to question, to bring beauty to a complex universe.

mirror me mother beauty

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.

cinema editing reality school

We have not learned the lessons of 9/11. This wrongful suspicion, racial hatred, and profiling is what I keep seeing.

racial seeing lessons hatred

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.

parents you time love

We never see the fancy schools with the blazers and ties in films about Africa! But, in fact, we too have class and elitism.

africa never see class

I don't want to say that we are the world in that we are not distinct from each other. I want to say that the humanity that is our foundation is common, but my culture, my beliefs, my values, what makes me sing and what makes me happy and the language I speak in and the relationships I have in the world are distinctive.

me humanity happy culture

From Vietnam's 'Deer Hunter' to Iraq, films are never about the person who has had his house destroyed.

person never deer house