Bernhard Schlink Quotes

I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.

I was going to be living there and I didn't want to sound like a foreigner all my life.

What is Americanization? It manifests itself, in a superficial way, when the immigrant adopts the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here. Far more important is the manifestation presented when he substitutes for his mother tongue the English language as the common medium of speech.

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.

America is remarkable, don't you think so? When I came to Washington, I was twelve years old. I spoke English with an English accent. It was assumed that it would go on in that way.

When you become an American, they give you an injection so your accent changes.

I do think of myself very strongly as a New Zealander, but when I moved out to the States, I was aware that I didn't want to just live in a satellite community of only other New Zealanders.

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.

We Muslims in the West, like Jews before us, grapple with the same issues that Jews of the past did: integration or isolation, tradition or reform, intermarriage or intra-marriage.

I consider myself Russian-American because I'm American by ethnicity and by passport, but I spent all my forming years over in the former Soviet Union in a Russian school. I never went to an American school. There was a lot of culture shock when I moved back to the States when I was 17.

I just grew up in the States, so I feel like I identify more with the American culture.

I still feel Ghanaian, but my mentality is more European.

If pressed, I would say I feel British. It's where I grew up and where I choose to live, the culture that I love, but I feel perfectly at home in America, I don't feel like a tourist or anything.

I never did very well as an immigrant. I've lived in several countries and been a disaster everywhere.

It's my country but I don't want to know about France - I was born there but I feel English.

Rather than be asked to abandon one's own heritage and to adapt to the mores of the new country, one was expected to possess a treasure of foreign skills and customs that would enrich the resources of American living.

I was born in America, but I consider myself a Filipino.

I'm still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent - you get contaminated after so long.

The generation that migrated to the West in the 1970s or 1960s has now lived more in the West than India, and India has changed so much. My parents fall into that category.

Most previous immigrants came to the United States to become Americans, with no intention of returning home. They relinquished their ties with their homeland. English was their key to prosperity, and they worked hard to master it.

I still have an accent. But when I return to Prague, I speak the language yet do not know what they are talking about.

Among those best known, their highest ambition is to build American homes, possess American furniture, dress in American clothes, adopt the American style of living and be American citizens.

When I was in the U.S. for 'Swimming Pool,' people had asked me, 'So are you going to settle down in Hollywood?' And I said, 'No, I'm French! I am living in France. I am not going to be American.'

Latinas who come to the U.S. should adapt, learn English and become a part of the community.

I'm 50% Asian actually, so yes I was born in Paris but I feel more international than French so I can't talk about French women.