Alice Merton Quotes

Maybe I am not French, maybe I am from nowhere.

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

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

Thematically, in a lot of what I write, there's a sense of displacement, of being rooted in multiple places, and how that can tug at your identities and your wants and your goals.

I was born in India - but never really lived there.

Sometimes I wonder where I am from. I am either way ahead or I come from another world. I don't recognise this world.

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

Language, identity, place, home: these are all of a piece - just different elements of belonging and not-belonging.

I was raised in Brussels as a Belgian but, at the same time, feeling that I wasn't necessarily from here.

I didn't have just one place where I could say, 'That's my home.'

When I'm in Brazil, I'm not Brazilian at all; I am a gringo. And then when I'm in England, I'm not really English, but when I lived in Canada, I was considered too English. So I never really felt like I clicked somewhere or that I belonged to one place.

When you come back to a country that you've left, you're in a very peculiar situation because, in a way, you don't belong to that country any more, even though when I'm in America I feel I don't belong there either.

What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.

My ancestors come from a part of southern China where most villages can trace their roots back at least a thousand years or even more. However, as a typical American, I have lived in four cities and moved at least seven times.

A man who lives everywhere lives nowhere.

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

Once a refugee, always a refugee. I can't ever remember not being all right wherever I was, but you don't give your whole allegiance to a place or want to be entirely identified with the society you're living in.

In England I am not English, in India I am not Indian. I am chained to the 1,000 square miles that is Trinidad; but I will evade that fate yet.

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.

It's strange; when I was younger and people would ask, 'Where are you from?', I'd say, 'West Africa', which was odd because I'm obviously not African, but it was my home.

Growing up outside your own country makes you feel that you don't belong when you return, so you feel free to make friends with whomever you like.

Lots of times you can feel as an exile in a country that you were born in.

I do consider myself as being French, I suppose.

I was never very interested in my own experience, I think, in fact, if my films have a common link, maybe it's being a foreigner - it's common for people who are born abroad - they don't know so well where they belong.

I belong nowhere and to no one.