Alfred Molina Quotes

It was very hard for me, for most of my life, to feel American, or call myself American, and that is a very complicated topic that would require a very long conversation.

Who does get to claim Americanness? You know, my brother was born in this country. And is he seen as American? So, I mean, it brings up a lot of interesting questions.

When I became an American citizen, nothing's changed because I'm still Asian.

I always identified myself as non-Swedish. I was never discriminated against, because I looked Swedish and speak without an accent. But I had an outsider's perspective.

In the States I might be an Asian face, look different from everyone else in TV and in music, but in Korea I look like everybody else, in Asia I look like everybody else.

"Native" always means people who belong someplace else, because they had once belonged somewhere. That shows that the white race does not really think they belong anywhere, because they think of everybody else as native.

Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.

We are Englishmen; that is one good fact.

I'm an immigrant writer, or an African writer, or an Ethiopian-American writer, and occasionally an American writer according to the whims and needs of my interpreters.

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

I'll always be Chinese first. It probably isn't politically correct to say or something that the majority understands; I can change my shoes, I can swap my passport, but, I'll always have this face.

It's a complicated issue, but I define myself as an American, primarily.

My father is from Newark in Nottinghamshire and my mother is from the very north of Ireland. They've ended up in Scotland, where my father - well, both of them - will always be seen as having come from somewhere else.

I am not an African. I am an American.

It's strange; when I was younger and people would ask, 'Where are you from?', I'd say, 'West Africa', which was odd because I'm obviously not African, but it was my home.

The Africans know I'm not an African. I'm an American.

No matter how American I become, I'm considered part of the Chinese community by my own family.

There's a big difference between race and culture. Because racially, I'm an Indian man. Culturally, not at all.

Racial affiliations are not severed by migration. The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second - and third-generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become 'Americanized,' the racial strains are undiluted

I am white. I am Jewish. I am an immigrant. I am a Russian American. But until recently I haven't focused so much on those parts of my identity. I've always thought of myself simply as a normal, unhyphenated American.

In Mexico they think I'm Mexican. In Italy they think I'm Italian.

With a name like Luis Alberto Urrea, it's political no matter what I do.

A lot of people say I'm not Mexican because I don't speak a lot of Spanish or am there a lot, but the United States is where it's at. Mexico's in my blood, in my DNA. It's in my kids' DNA.

You can try to justify how Asian you are, but you're never going to make everybody happy.

The fact is, I'm half-British, half-Malaysian. For an Asian who's grown up in America to be commenting on how Asian I am when they've never left America... does that make them more or less Asian than me?