Leila Janah Quotes

I don't live for stuff and things, and if I had to live in a cardboard box, I would put curtains on it.

I grew up learning to do more with less.

My number-one theory in life is that style is proportional to your lack of resources - the less you have, the more stylish you're likely to be.

I tend to kind of try to use what's in my environment to the best of my ability rather than seek out things that I don't already have.

You get really scrappy when you're making things for zero dollars, and you just have to keep thinking like that. It's not like, 'Oh, we now have a little bit more money, let's do things differently.' If you just keep boiling it down to the simplest possible way to make it, I think that always ends up being the best.

I often think I am a better person because I lived for many years of my life with a flashlight. I have developed skills I did not think were possible - bathing with a cup of water by candlelight, for instance, and writing a story with a headlamp on.

I was born in 1946, so I was born on the tail end of when everything was deemed important. You made things to last. If you came from a poor family, there was only one can opener.

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.

Sometimes, thinking on your feet can be the most creative. Constrained circumstances can bring the best out of you. Some of the most successful shows come out of shoestring invention.

Maybe scarcity isn't always a bad thing. Maybe scarcity is something to seek out, to fabricate for oneself.

Actually, everyone in India does some jugaad in their lives, whether in school, college, marriages, work etc. And most of us have different jugaads for different situations.

My mother could make something out of nothing - and everything started from scratch.

We have to learn how to work within the limits that are possible, not what is desirable.

I grew up in a family where our mother made our clothing. We didn't have a lot of money, so we learned how to scrimp, and we learned how to invent and to create. And those are learned skills.

Coming from a big family, I learned a lot. Things don't have to be perfect. You can do okay with 'almost.'

When you start with next to nothing, all you've got is a lot of thought, a lot of innovation, figuring new ways to do things without using a lot of money.

A challenging economy is always good for design. It unites necessity and functionality. You are forced to be creative with poor materials.

Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have.

My mother was making $135 a week, but she had resilience and imagination. She might take frozen vegetables, cook them with garlic, onion and Spam, and it would taste like a four-star dinner.

You can do great things with low-tech stuff.

We embrace the shoestring budget. We like being limited by the constraints. It inspires creativity. I don't know what we would spend money on. We don't hire actors. We see budget constraints as a personal challenge. We're like survivalist local commercial directors.

I think being on a constraint with money makes you much more creative.

We were rather poor, but we always had what we needed.

You've got to deal with the tools you have in hand. I'm a firm believer in that.

When you cannot have something, you make what you have work.