Ry Cooder Quotes

Immigrants to the United States usually arrive with a willingness to fit into their new country and reshape their identities accordingly.

America is transplanted Europe, but a Europe that has not been disintegrated and scattered in the transplanting as in some Dispersion. Its colonies live here inextricably mingled, yet not homogeneous. They merge but they do not fuse.

You leave America, then you go someplace else, you begin to create something totally different.

I see the American experience as being defined by the immigrant paradigm of rupture and renewal: rupture with the old world, the old ways, and renewal of the self in a bright but difficult New World.

I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted.

America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!

Explain to me what Italian-American culture is. We've been here 100 years. Isn't Italian-American culture American culture? That's because we're so diverse, in terms of intermarriage.

I'm very proud being Puerto Rican. I'm American. That is what America is made of - people from different lands.

Children are all foreigners.

The experience of being a mixed person is all over the place - one of my best friends is Chinese and Italian; my other best friend is Lebanese and Trinidadian. The mix of heritage, culture or identity is something that our country is built on.

I love being a foreigner.

I think everyone is kind of an immigrant somehow, and I wasn't raised in an American society at home. My household was a Jamaican household, so I got all my traditions, all my roots and culture intact, so I'm able to support both countries.

I've gotten used to being a foreigner.

America gave the world the notion of the melting pot - an alchemical cooking device wherein diverse ethnic and religious groups voluntarily mix together, producing a new, American identity. And while critics may argue that the melting pot is a national myth, it has tenaciously informed the America's collective imagination.

I'm unique - a cosmopolitan mix.

I'm interested in people who find themselves in places, either of their choosing or not, and who are forced to decide how best to live there. That feeling of both citizenship and exile, of always being an expatriate - with all the attendant problems and complications and delight.

Change is no threat to culture.

A lot of what I experienced growing up in the U.S.S.R. and coming to the U.S. as an immigrant actually reflects itself in Whatsapp. Experiences from our youth shape what we do later in life.

I want people to experience what it's like being from Haiti, coming to America, being Wyclef - multicultural, multilingual.

I was a redhead when I first came to America.

I think the most interesting New Yorkers are the people who were not born here.

America is a such a melting pot, I'm not sure if roast chicken is the classic comfort food for everybody.

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.

I'm Russian Jewish. And I had to grow up really quickly.

I like being a foreigner. For me, to live in California is very pleasant - I'm more comfortable not feeling a part of everything, not feeling responsible for the government or the roads or the health system.