Aleksandar Hemon Quotes

All three of the great waves of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European immigrants to America innovated.

Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.

Stuart Hall was an utterly unique figure. Although he arrived at the age of 19 from Jamaica and spent the rest of his life here, he never felt at home in Britain. This juxtaposition was a crucial source of his strength and originality. Because of his colour and origin, he saw the country differently - not as a native, but as an outsider.

Immigrant parents dream that their children will find a place in their new home, and they willingly suffer hardships in service to that dream. That was certainly true of my parents.

In many immigrant families, the parents are just talking and talking about the home country until the children are like, 'Oh, don't tell us any more.'

I took Laura on a trip once where we followed the Immigrant Trail for about six hundred miles. She really learned a lesson. People forget too often how it was back then.

My grandparents, they came through Ellis Island in 1923, and you know, I'd heard all the stories.

I loved 'Ghana Must Go' by Taiye Selasi. It's about a first-generation African family living in America that has to return home to Nigeria when their estranged father passes away.

Most American Jews came from the lower middle classes, and therefore they brought with them not a lot of Jewish culture. The American Jewish story starts with Ellis Island, and the candy store in the Bronx.

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.

At Ellis Island, I mean, you didn't go there if you arrived in first class. It was only the poorest, the people in the worst shape.

My grandparents used to tell me stories about their trip to Ellis Island from Russia and life on the Lower East Side of New York.

When you live in New York, one of two things happen - you either become a New Yorker, or you feel more like the place you came from.

What Mexicans want and aspire to, is to go there and work temporarily and raise some money and come back home. That's what they want, so nobody's asking for those two, three million Mexicans that are illegally in the United States to become American citizens.

Beginning with a trip out to Ellis Island, I saw for myself where thousands of European immigrants took their first steps onto American soil, bringing with them nothing but their ambition: people such as Erich von Stroheim and Adolph Zukor.

My grandmother was born in Russia, and she came through Poland on her way to America in the early 20s. She moved to Brooklyn.

When I arrived in the U.S., I knew little English and didn't have any friends. The neighborhood and school kids were so welcoming. They made me feel at home very quickly.

He looked like someone with a steerage ticket on the titanic. Somebody who'd be standing in line at Ellis Island. Undiluted and old-blooded. Also cute.

Pomegranate Soup is glorious, daring and delightful. I adored the Iranian sisters, Marjan, Bahar and Layla, who are looking to build a life, start a business and find love in a place so far from home. Ireland has never been more beautiful - the perfect setting for this story filled with humor, hope and possibility.

I had some people who disagreed with me here or there - but nothing as strong as I've received, you know, coming to America. That is the irony of life, so I guess - I always tell people - I go I feel like in a strange way, I'm home. You know, this doesn't shock me. This is just - I've come a long way to be in a place that is extremely familiar to me.

I am the byproduct of an Ellis Island orgy, basically. I'm everything. I've got quite a mixture in me. I know a lot of it and I don't know some of it. I'm pretty mixed up, but mostly Russian and Irish.

Obviously, given the objective that we have, what I would hope is that people would be able to see that actually we had reduced the numbers of people, the net number of people, coming into the country. People would, presumably, see that, but it's difficult to say how.

From that house there has come so much life that it ought never to die or fall into ruin... For me that house was a gateway to America.

I have no problem living in Liverpool, but I think my wife and daughters deserve to enjoy every day to the full and live their lives - but they have to be at home all day. My wife doesn't speak a word of English, so she depends 100% on me. I live here with them. That's my world, that's my life.

I think I was always informally thinking about choice from when I was a very young child because I was born to Sikh immigrant parents, so I was constantly going back and forth between a Sikh household and an American outside world, so I was going back and forth between a very traditional Sikh home in which you had to follow the Five K's.