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Daily Inspiration Quote by 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"

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The word "outside" lands like a harmless spatial metaphor until Nair pries it open and shows the politics inside. She is not romanticizing marginality; she is interrogating the machinery that produces it. "Who defines it" is the blade in the sentence: exclusion isn’t an accident, it’s authored. By turning the frame from the excluded to the definers, she shifts responsibility away from individuals deemed "other" and toward the cultural gatekeepers, institutions, and tastes that police belonging.

Nair’s second move is subtler. Saying outsiders are "extremely inspiring" risks the familiar trap of treating marginalized people as aesthetic fuel for the center. But in her mouth - as a director whose career has repeatedly built stories around immigrants, women, and cross-cultural friction - it reads more like a creative ethic: the edge is where narrative energy concentrates, where people invent new languages of survival and style because the default scripts don’t fit. Outsiders become innovators not by nature, but by necessity.

The context is inseparable from her filmography and biography: an Indian filmmaker who has moved between continents, industries, and audiences. She knows the "outside" is relative - you can be celebrated at Cannes and still be asked to translate yourself in Hollywood terms. The intent is both political and artistic: refuse the center’s definitions, and keep your camera trained on the places where power says, "Nothing to see here". That’s often where the future is rehearsing.

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APA Style (7th ed.)
Nair, Mira. (2026, January 17). 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. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-want-to-question-what-the-outside-is-and-who-58343/

Chicago Style
Nair, Mira. "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." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-want-to-question-what-the-outside-is-and-who-58343/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"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." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-want-to-question-what-the-outside-is-and-who-58343/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Mira Nair on Outsiders and the Politics of Belonging
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Mira Nair (born October 15, 1957) is a Director from India.

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