Donovan Quotes

Being in a new country, you learn a lot about yourself.

I was born in Costa Rica and we moved to America where it was a whole new world for me.

Every country I go to, I learn a little bit more about myself.

I've done a lot of things away from my homeland.

During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba.

You have to remember that I was an Australian girl of the Fifties and Sixties. For Australians at that time, it was imperative to get out of the country and discover the world.

I'm from a rural town outside of Stockholm, so in coming to L.A., I've been able to not think that much about my background. It's much easier for me in this big town, this big bubble to isolate myself from that and be a little more self-confident. I'm here to do my take on soul.

A familiar question for Australians is how much we are a product of our circumstances, and how much we are what we have made ourselves to be. In truth, by the act of migration the country was made: by that voluntary act and by the emigrants' ambitions it was built.

Coming from the Philippines to the U.S. did shape me in that it gave me perseverance.

Being an immigrant gives you so much courage.

In my first few years of being in New York, I had a major identity crisis because I'd never stayed in one place for so long.

I knew that I would have to leave Venezuela in order to figure out who I was.

Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.

I was born in Romania and later lived in Vienna, Austria, for a few years, and I eventually made my way over to New York in '95.

I'm interested in people who find themselves in places, either of their choosing or not, and who are forced to decide how best to live there. That feeling of both citizenship and exile, of always being an expatriate - with all the attendant problems and complications and delight.

He comes to this other world and he has to reinvent himself. Again, it felt natural, even though I'd been working really hard trying to come up with something.

We moved to Gambia from Sweden when I was six years old because my dad was from there. It was definitely a culture shock.

I grew up in the age of discount air fare, and for me, the act of joining a culture was a great way about learning about that different culture. So I grew up in the South, and went to college in the North, and found out that I learned about myself as a Southerner by leaving the South and going to the Northeast.

I was a redhead when I first came to America.

Learn not only to find what you like, learn to like what you find.

Inside me I'm Ghanaian, and I'm proud to be African. But of course I'm Italian. I was born in Italy. I've never been to Africa in my life, but I will go one day.

After college, I wanted to learned about myself as an American, so I left the United States and went to Japan.

At the age of 25, I gave up my study of Japanese language and culture at university in Brisbane and moved to the town of Alice Springs.

I grew up in the Ukraine 'til I was about 7, and then I moved to L.A.

Living in different cultures helped me work out who I was going to be, separate from where I came from.