Karine Vanasse Quotes

I'm a little bit of everything. Sometimes people think I'm not Puerto Rican, because my name doesn't sound Spanish.

I'm an immigrant writer, or an African writer, or an Ethiopian-American writer, and occasionally an American writer according to the whims and needs of my interpreters.

With cab drivers, I always say I'm from Brazil. I don't say I'm from Israel. It's happened more than once that someone is blaming me for the government's policy. And I say, 'Listen, I live here. I'm a musician. I don't call the shots.'

I grew up in America - I was born and raised in Texas. I might look different, but at the same time, I'm pretty American.

Remember that when you say "I will have non of this exile and this stranger for his face is not like my face and his speech is strange," you have denied America with that word.

As a European I had fit in almost seamlessly in New York for the last 25 years, but in Oklahoma I stood out like a sore thumb.

I had to tell people I was not born with a scarf because I came out Iran. People think you came out of your mother with a scarf; they can't imagine that the scarf is not stuck to your head.

People always think I'm Jewish and changed my last name from Rabinowitz.

I think of myself as being Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I'm English.

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

I am Ecuadorian but people felt so safe passing me off as a skinny, blue-eyed white girl.

I remember people saying: 'You look funny, your hair is so black, you have a flat nose,' but I didn't think of it being racism, and I still don't. But there was a sense of difference, of being an outsider.

One thing I noticed when I moved to America, people don't really know about me, so a lot of them question why I look like a boy or dress like a boy, or why I didn't have longer hair, or what's with the tattoos.

I looked real Neanderthal. I could have been Mexican, I could have been black; I could have been anything.

I always identified myself as non-Swedish. I was never discriminated against, because I looked Swedish and speak without an accent. But I had an outsider's perspective.

I've often gone to start a film only to find the producers surprised to discover that I'm American.

Somebody told me once I wasn't Latin enough, and that made me laugh.

I have to expend an awful lot of energy actively undoing the impact of my name. Understandably, people assume that I have at least some connection to Iran. The truth is that I don't. I have very little knowledge about the culture, the language, the history. I've never been to Iran. I've never even been inside a mosque.

There's a big difference between race and culture. Because racially, I'm an Indian man. Culturally, not at all.

What about a white South African who comes here from Africa. Is he an African American?

If, for 2,000 years, you dress up differently, believe in a different God, celebrate different holidays, and on top of it insist on telling everyone that you're completely different than them, ultimately they'll believe you.

It was very hard for me, for most of my life, to feel American, or call myself American, and that is a very complicated topic that would require a very long conversation.

I don't consider myself an Iranian comedian; I consider myself a comedian who happens to be of Iranian descent.

People ask me where I'm from. I say Ireland, and they are like 'Really? You don't look Irish.' Then you have to explain... people are intrigued, but sometimes you think, 'Why do I have to tell my whole story every time I open my mouth?

Puerto Rican culture is very different from Mexican culture. Part of the Mexican psychology is the idea of being an immigrant or being illegal or being confused with that. That doesn't happen with Puerto Ricans, because you're a commonwealth.