Andrew Yang Quotes

My early childhood prepared me to be a social psychologist. I grew up in a South Bronx ghetto in a very poor family. From Sicilian origin, I was the first person in my family to complete high school, let alone go to college.

I'm the first person in my family to go to college, and I'm an immigrant. My aspirations coming out of college weren't particularly lofty. I wanted a good job with a good company.

I was born in 1935. But my mother and father - who were immigrants from Ireland - and everybody that I knew growing up in Brooklyn came out of the Depression, and they were remarkable people.

Police work was fascinating, and I didn't imagine that acting was something a kid from San Mateo, California, could really pursue.

When you're the only Asian in the room, the last thing you want to do is to point out you're Asian. And be the Asian dude.

Parts for Asians are hard enough to get, and if Tee, which sounds kind of generically Asian, helps me get roles, so be it.

I did not grow up singing Yiddish.

When I was little, I never wanted to be a model or really thought of doing this job. I'm from a small city, Yongzhou Hunan in the south of China - not a big place for fashion.

I'm from a small town, and I thought I would be a lawyer.

My father grew up with no money. He was raised in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the U.S. My mother helped him sew labels into his ties. My life has been very comfortable, sure, but they instilled into us the importance of the work ethic.

I never had a desire to be a filmmaker. As a child and a teenager and in college, I was not aware of black women making films.

I don't look in the mirror and see a president of the United States. I don't have that ambition.

I was painfully shy as a child; I was dyslexic. I had a single mother who's an immigrant. I just didn't believe acting was something that people like me could do on a professional level.

Because I sidestepped all the stereotypical roles, in a way I've made a career out of not being Asian - a lot of my roles weren't written as Asian - so there's an impulse in me that wants to take a U-turn and play a very grounded, real Asian character, maybe an immigrant.

I am proud to be a first-generation Chinese-American in the sport of figure skating.

Well, you know, I kind of lived my whole life with people, on a Navy ship, and I'm son of an immigrant. And we've all - really appreciate being able to make something clear in a simple way that families quite understand.

One of the expectations growing up was that I'd become a well-known artist.

I grew up in San Diego with immigrant parents, before the food blogs, before this kind of celebrity chef culture we know now.

Nothing in my early childhood suggested to anyone - except maybe my father - that one day I would be standing here and be known simply as Judge Judy.

You can take the girl out of the estate, but you can't take the estate out of the girl.

Like many of us in Arizona, I wasn't born here - I'm a product of the Midwest and the working class.

I never dreamt of the Olympics growing up. It's not something that I watched on TV; it's not something my parents ever talked about.

I'm not an engineer. I did not study engineering in school. But I was a super ambitious student growing up.

I am a fifth-generation American, but from a young age, I went to yeshiva. I spent 12 hours a day with rabbis, and I think in Yiddish. To this day, I have to go back and unravel my writing and polish it so everyone doesn't sound like an old Jewish woman.

The fact that I'm able to portray these complex, fully realized, queer Asian characters? I never thought it would be in this position. You just never see those types of characters and that type of representation.