Claes Oldenburg Quotes

My mother came here to New York. She and my grandmother were domestics, cooking, cleaning for other people.

Ed Koch once said that New York City is where immigrants come to audition for America. That's what happened to my parents; that's what happened to me.

My great grandfather emigrated from Italy, and my grandfather worked in a steel mill and was able to raise kids and have a family and go on vacation.

As little boys, my brother and I used to spend hours with my grandmother, asking her about the details of how she came to America. She could only give us a smattering of details, but they all found their way into our collective imagination, eventually becoming a part of our own cultural identity and connection to the past.

When I go to Colombia or Mexico, I speak Spanish. When I go to Italy, I speak Italian. When I'm in Germany, I speak German. Would I expect them to speak English in these countries? No. I mean, great if they do, but no. Would I be offended if in Spain they say we speak Spanish? No. If I was an immigrant there, no.

Both of my parents were first-generation Americans, the children of Jews who left Eastern Europe around the turn of the century.

My parents moved to the states when I was 6, so I was raised by my grandma in the Dominican Republic and didn't see them again until I was 10.

I'm not Chinese, but both of my parents were born in Iran; my brother and I were the first ones born here. First in our family to go to college, that whole thing.

I was born in Leningrad, U.S.S.R., before my father got an appointment at a university in Italy and we moved to Italy. I spend a few years there before my family returned to Russia.

I was the first of my siblings born here in the United States.

My family came from Spain in 1725, and if people want to consider me Hispanic, they can, but I didn't advertise that way, and I'm an American first.

My parents are super westernized. My mom listens to western music, my dad was like a pub landlord so he properly embraced English life. But the truth is they both came from tiny villages in Sri Lanka.

My father is pretty much a self-made man, and I am proud of that. He was born in Patiala and crossed the border from India to Pakistan when he was four.

I keep my Scottish connection. I know where I was born, and that's an important part of my history, and I think all immigrants are the same. But if I could live anywhere in the world, it would be Australia.

My grandfather on my dad's side was the first in our family to settle in the U.K. He came from Pakistan on his own in the '60s and worked in a cotton mill in Bolton, earning enough to bring over the rest of his family. My dad, Shah, was only about eight when he came to this country. Like most immigrants, he has a fierce work ethic.

I feel I have a responsibility to carry out the immigrant story, since it's one that I hold very dear to my heart, since my story is similar in a lot of ways.

I'm the granddaughter of immigrants.

We were second-generation immigrants, and it was luxury enough to go to college. The luxury of the arts was still a generation away.

My grandfather and his wife came to America at the end of the 19th century from Hungary. Everyone started out on the Lower East Side. They became embourgeoise and would move to the Upper West Side. Then, if they'd make money, they'd move to Park Avenue. Their kids would become artists and move down to the Lower East Side and the Village.

You can have your country and be pleased to welcome others to it. You can have your country and still enjoy living elsewhere.

Plenty of people are intrigued by their family history. Growing up as the son of West Indian immigrants who moved to London in the 1950s and 60s, I was especially fascinated by anecdotes about the lives of my Guyanese relatives, which seemed a million miles away from Tottenham's Broadwater Farm estate.

I'm the grandson of immigrants who came across rivers and oceans to get here, some without documentation.

Our old stories happen to be your new stories. The stories that you're seeing as immigrant stories are your grandparents' stories, are your great-grandparents' stories. You just happen to be separated from them a little bit.

As I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family - my aunties, grandparents - is in Africa.

I'd like to live in a world where immigration is just called moving.