Lulu Wang Quotes

I know my own deficiencies, one of which is that I had lived away from America for such a long time. It's called expatriate.

I've always been an outsider. Even in London. If I returned to Scotland, I'd feel a complete foreigner.

I've always felt like a foreigner wherever I've lived. I don't feel much towards my Italian or Scottish roots, although I do cook the pasta at home.

I'd always somehow felt slightly as if I'd been born in the wrong country.

Growing up in the States, there's this part of me that's like, man, I'm Indian. Like, this is where I belong. And as soon as I got to India, and I had to go to the bathroom in some places, I was, like, 'Man - I am American.'

When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You speak a secret, unknown language, lacking any correspondence to the environment. An absence that creates a distance within you.

Although I hold a German passport, I feel very much alienated when I'm there.

The French hold onto their traditions. I was always so alienated in America. My work was this constant reaction to that.

I don't know what 'home' or 'abroad' is any more.

I've spent my whole life in Chicago being asked where am I from, so that I have a sense of displacement that also is very psychologically disorienting.

I belong in America more than South Africa. I can't remember the feeling of living there anymore. It's like it was in another life. That's sad in a way. It is my country. It's where I grew up. You don't know what it's like to have these negative feelings about your homeland. There are roots you can't escape.

I'm stuck somewhere a small island in the middle of the Atlantic where I'm alone. Because in France, they're like, 'No, you're not like us, you're not a French guy.' And in America, they're like, 'You're not like us.' I'm really alone in my little thing.

I not only lived physically away from my native land, but the values and critical judgments of those closest to me became stranger and stranger.

I don't feel alienated from American culture, but I understand people who do.

When I'd go to Israel, I felt like a tourist. My social and professional ties had started to dissolve, and it confused me. I didn't know whether I should stay here in Paris or go back to Israel, or even cut off all my ties with Israel so I could really plant roots here. Or maybe go somewhere else altogether.

Canada was my whole world and my whole reality, and now I meet people who've never been there, and it's like, 'You've never been to my whole world?'

I was a supporting character in other people's lives, which seemed right and familiar to me. I was also an outsider: English in the U.S., American in England, dogged yet comforted by that familiar feeling of alien-ness, which occupied that space where my sense of self should have been.

At school, I never had a hold on English history, and cheder was a place run by sadistic incompetents, so I felt alienated from the Jewish part of my past.

I always feel like a foreigner in America.

While I was born in Singapore, I didn't actually grow up here. So I don't remember all that much.

I often feel like an outsider wherever I go, so I'm always attracted to stories about identity and the meaning of home.

I always felt that I wasn't as American as Americans and then I realised when I got back to the Philippines that I was not Filipino.

For someone who doesn't live there, when I go back to Scotland it's very weird for me.

And that is something I've heard from many people who immigrate is that when they go back to their home countries, in a way, they think they're going to be embraced and completely feel like they've come home. This disconcerting thing is when you go back there and you feel more foreign than you ever have.

I first visited the Philippines when I was 29. I thought I would feel at home there, but I felt more out of place than I did in the U.S. I discovered I was more American than Filipino. It was shattering because I never felt quite at home in the U.S., either.