Lidia Bastianich Quotes

So I left with Jean Claude and went to Paris, so when the Russians came to Prague, I was in Paris.

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.

My family fled the Soviet Union when I was three and a half years old. Upon arriving in New York City in 1979, my father worked multiple jobs to support us, all the while learning English at night.

I wanted - and still want - to tell my mother's story. She fled Stalin's army in 1944, leaving Latvia, which was to be occupied by the Soviets for the next 50 years, and arrived to the U.S. when she was 11.

When I was 11 years old, my family had to leave East Germany and begin a new life in West Germany overnight. Until my father could get back into his original profession as a government employee, my parents operated a small laundry business in our little town. I became the laundry delivery boy.

My mother was an immigrant from Lebanon to the United States. She came when she was 18 years old in 1920.

One of the most difficult times in my life was when I escaped from Romania in November of 1989.

Joining the Grand Old Party seemed like a natural choice for someone like me who fled the Soviet Union as a boy and came to Los Angeles with his mother and grandmother in 1976.

I have been a Republican since I came to this country, fleeing communism when I was eight years old and Ronald Reagan was president.

As a 7-year-old child, I saw the Wall being erected. No one - although it was a stark violation of international law - believed at the time that one ought to intervene militarily in order to protect citizens of the GDR and whole Eastern bloc, of the consequences of that - namely, to live in lack of freedom for many, many years.

When I first moved from Shanghai when I was five, I just thought of myself as Chinese.

My father fled from the North, hating communism.

I was born in East Germany, before the wall came down. We sort of escaped, I guess. I grew up all over the place. Germany, London, back and forth between Minnesota and Germany. I was sort of an army brat, but not in the army.

My family immigrated to the States in 1981, when I was 14.

I came to America when I was 7.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I couldn't get published for three years. Then the times changed: glasnost, perestroika. So, for three years, I wasn't allowed to publish 'The Unwomanly Face of War,' but then it changed.

It is not always easy to change country.

My parents fled from North Korea during the Korean War because they despised the North Korean Communist regime. They fled to seek freedom and came to South Korea.

I grew up learning firsthand what it was like to flee communism and oppression.

I defected to South Korea in search of freedom of speech and movement. I had longed to put my feet on this soil, even in my dreams.

Poles have a mistrust of the West and an even deeper mistrust of the East.

I was born in Iran, my parents are Armenian. We fled from Iran to the Netherlands when I was eight years old. We had a lot of family and friends in Iran, so it was hard to leave, especially for my parents. But we managed to settle well in the Netherlands, after a year in refugee camps. But I understood it was a process.

When I finally came to the United States, I was forced to get a job right away. I spoke no English - none. I started working as an aesthetician in this beautiful boutique salon in Beverly Hills. Being an aesthetician didn't require an elaborate vocabulary in English. My first client was Cindy Crawford! I swear.

For people familiar with Eastern Europe, Marci Shore's 'The Taste of Ashes' is, in spite of its subject matter, delicious. A professor at Yale with much experience in Eastern Europe, she writes with great sureness of touch, weaving personal recollections with intellectual commentary and ideas with emotions, including her own.