Mira Nair

I want to question what the outside is and who defines it. I often find those that are considered to be on the outside extremely inspiring.

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.

I'm a self-taught landscape gardener; it's a real passion of mine. It's what I do in my spare time because trees don't ask questions!

I'm the bullheaded type, and I really don't give up if I fall in love.

When people break up, after sharing their entire souls with each other, I don't want to believe that you just switch off. There are remnants of melancholia, and there is so much that stays with you because you loved this person. Of course, it's that much more complicated when it's an interracial love or love from a person from another culture.

I'm not interested in passion and love for their own sake - without the struggle of life, they're just fluff.

Bollywood actors are so set in what they want, and the way they want it. And why shouldn't they be? But it is not the same in Hollywood, because the love of the audience is not the same.

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.

Truth is more peculiar than fiction. Life is really a startling place.

To make films, you have to have something to say. To have something to say, you have to be a student of life. And to be a student of life, you have to be feeding yourself with what life, politics, society, and your family fuels you with.

I am at home in many cultures. I live actively in three continents and I've done that for most of my life, so I just make films as I see the world, and that happens to speak to people. I do things that I want to do.

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