Maria Ressa Quotes

I think of myself as an Indian comedian, but I've had British and American schooling. I always had this feeling of not fitting in anywhere, of observing situations from the outside.

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.

I often say to my friends that I felt too Puerto Rican to live in the States; then I felt too American to live in Puerto Rico. So when I settled back in Puerto Rico in 1992, I had to come to terms with all of that.

In America, I'm a foreigner because of my Korean heritage. In Asia, because I was born in America, I'm a foreigner. I'm always a foreigner.

Only when I came to America did I think of myself as British.

When I got to Florida, I was a British kid, but I was also an Indian kid: a brown kid with an English accent. Talk about being an outsider. And that's become the theme of a lot of the stuff I write about.

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.

Maybe to feel like an Afghan I needed to be born and raised in the States, and maybe I needed to live in Afghanistan for nearly a decade to feel like an American. Both worlds shaped me, but neither one of them completely correspond to the picture I have of myself.

American histories were the same; they had these mad ideas about how Parliament worked, or what people really meant when they said A, B, or C. All my life, I felt simultaneously deracinated and rooted in both places, and now it's my greatest strength: I'm culturally bilingual.

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

Unfortunately, I think I drifted so much growing up that I don't have a strong sense of identity. I don't feel at home anywhere, and because of that, I think I'm more of a chameleon.

When I go to Brazil, I feel like an American, and in the U.S., I always notice the traits that make me Brazilian.

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

I'd always felt like a Canadian living in the U.S.

In Geneva, I was seen as an outsider. In the U.S., I was considered Eurotrash. And in London, I'm seen as an American.

II grew up in Australia, but I'm not from there originally. Like, my dad's South American, so I know what that's like to grow up in a culture that's not your own.

My head is in India, yet my body remains in Britain. I straddle the world like a colossus. Like a 5ft. 7in. colossus.

What everybody forgets is that when I was a journalist in Britain and in the United States, I was always a Canadian. And the price of expatriation does not go down, it goes up. I never felt part of the political common sense of Britain. I never felt it in the United States. I had no natural home in Britain and the U.S.

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'm British - ostensibly British - but I don't know where I really belong, you know?

If you take my own life, the longer you stay in a country, you almost lose your former self and become this third-party person who is caught in between two worlds.

I grew up in a Mauritian bubble in France... I had the feeling of not belonging, but still living with French culture.

I'm French - it's less important. Meaning, I remain a Frenchman in America, but I adapt to American culture. I feel good there - but I'm still a foreigner.

I had quite a scattered childhood. I was Irish in London, because I had my secondary school education there. I never really fitted anywhere. I didn't feel it was a negative thing, and I was never made to feel different - I just knew I was.

To be a foreigner may be an advantage but disadvantage as well. It was advantage for me for sure.