Sayed Kashua Quotes

I was 13 when my parents moved to Israel, and I was put in a Scottish mission school. Ninety-nine percent of the children were Israeli... Suddenly, I found myself speaking the wrong language, dressed in the wrong clothes, picked up by the wrong mode of transportation - an embassy car instead of a bus.

I lived in England to learn English. When I went to England for the first time, it was like being on the Moon. I had no friends, I couldn't speak the language. I was very isolated.

It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one's own.

Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.

The first years of my life in the U.S. were very difficult.

It took me a year to really learn the American lingo. I really feel for people who are coming here and don't speak English at all. It must be hell.

When I moved to Bombay, it was very harsh. I was nothing like what I am today. I couldn't speak a word of English. In England, people might be very understanding about that, but in Bombay, they're not very forgiving. 'If you don't speak English, how do you expect to work in Hindi films?'

The first season in a new country like England is very difficult.

It's difficult to adapt to Barcelona.

When I first arrived in the country, I really didn't speak much of the language. I knew two words coming here, and they were 'Hello' and 'Shut up.'

Moving to France is not the hard part. Living here is more difficult. Of course there are many benefits but it's not always easy especially if you don't speak the language.

When I came here I moved to London and I was meeting so many new people and had to speak only in English, which is not my native language.

When I came to Korea for the first time, I couldn't understand the language.

I bought a new Japanese car, I turned on the radio ... I don't understand a word they're saying.

I remember that coming to America was scary for me because everything here is just bigger, better, shinier, you know?

We breathed the air of freedom without knowing the language or any person.

Never the less, it is no light thing to enter into a profession absolutely foreign and alien to the people among which one's lot is cast; a profession which seems as dim and faraway and unreal as the shores of Europe.

When I turned 11, we had to leave East Germany overnight because of the political orientation of my father. Now I was going to school in West Germany, which was American-occupied at that time. There in school, all children were required to learn English and not Russian. To learn Russian had been difficult, but English was impossible for me.

I came to Los Angeles for the first time in 1994. I spoke no English. I only knew how to say two sentences: 'How are you?' and 'I want to work with Johnny Depp.'

I understand what it's like to come with your family, and to uproot yourself and come to another culture. You need a lot of support. People say, 'She's got her daughter; she's got her husband.' Yeah, but she hasn't got anyone else.

We moved to Australia for two years though and that was a little bit tough trying to fit in.

It's not a lighthearted decision to change your language, your country, your citizenship, and come to a world where you don't know anybody, to leave a place where you've had opportunities to build friendships from childhood. That's quite a big decision to make.

Mum and Dad sent us to a bilingual school, so we had half the lessons in English and half in French. But I remember being hugely lost.

It's hard when you are trying to ingratiate yourself in a completely foreign world. It takes a long time.

When I came to America, I had some surprises at first, but I could soon adjust.