Salman Rushdie Quotes

All American fiction could be classified as immigrant fiction.

I've always seen myself as an all-American kid, you know. You're not just white or black or Asian or Latino. We're in the melting pot of America.

America gave the world the notion of the melting pot - an alchemical cooking device wherein diverse ethnic and religious groups voluntarily mix together, producing a new, American identity. And while critics may argue that the melting pot is a national myth, it has tenaciously informed the America's collective imagination.

I'm a first-generation American, so I had friends from several cultures while growing up, including Indian and Iranian friends.

The other aspect of American identity worth focusing on is the concept of America as a nation of immigrants. That certainly is a partial truth. But it is often assumed to be the total truth.

America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!

Though I don't have any serious argument with Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods', I believe that Americans cease to be Europeans - the land makes them become Americans. You see it happening all the time when you travel around America.

Explain to me what Italian-American culture is. We've been here 100 years. Isn't Italian-American culture American culture? That's because we're so diverse, in terms of intermarriage.

America is transplanted Europe, but a Europe that has not been disintegrated and scattered in the transplanting as in some Dispersion. Its colonies live here inextricably mingled, yet not homogeneous. They merge but they do not fuse.

I'm very proud being Puerto Rican. I'm American. That is what America is made of - people from different lands.

The American identity is mind-bogglingly various.

New Brown America represents a whole generation of kids that are descendants of either immigrants or immigrants themselves, that are coming to America, enriching what it means to be an American.

While I resonate deeply with my maternal cultural heritage, I identify as American.

I don't know if it's because my father's from Argentina, that I'm the son of an immigrant, I don't know if its because I'm Jewish, but I have always been mindful that the best insights occur when you have some kind of an outsider perspective.

I've always loved New York City and the idea of a cultural exchange: the immigrants coming to America.

It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Jamaican-Americans - they feel American. It's a huge success story.

I'm married to an American, so I guess that has changed my perspective on the subjects I can write about.

I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted.

America is this incredible mosaic of immigrants, so people really want to be anchored in some kind of culture as well as the one they are living in.

Yeah, I think that's sort of the American way. And it's also the Polish way, it turns out.

Here's an idea: How about just 'Americans?' That has a nice ring to it, if you ask me. Placing undue emphasis on our 'separateness' is a step backward. Bring back the melting pot.

My parents were French and Irish and our family even has Spanish blood-and I do so love the United States and consider myself part American.

What makes America special is that people come here, assimilate and become American with all of the rights and responsibilities citizenship bestows.

The Indo-Canadian community has been a microcosm of the people of Indian origin living abroad besides reflecting India's diversity.

I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.