Claire Denis Quotes

I've always felt like a foreigner wherever I've lived. I don't feel much towards my Italian or Scottish roots, although I do cook the pasta at home.

I'd always somehow felt slightly as if I'd been born in the wrong country.

Thematically, in a lot of what I write, there's a sense of displacement, of being rooted in multiple places, and how that can tug at your identities and your wants and your goals.

I had quite a scattered childhood. I was Irish in London, because I had my secondary school education there. I never really fitted anywhere. I didn't feel it was a negative thing, and I was never made to feel different - I just knew I was.

I don't feel Swedish. In fact, my father tells me to get out of here as soon as I can.

What everybody forgets is that when I was a journalist in Britain and in the United States, I was always a Canadian. And the price of expatriation does not go down, it goes up. I never felt part of the political common sense of Britain. I never felt it in the United States. I had no natural home in Britain and the U.S.

I'm a product of Russian culture, but I never felt it was my country.

The fact that I am a writer comes from the experience of being cut away from my roots and living in Venezuela, where I couldn't find a place for myself, for years and years.

People are always asking me where I come from, and they're expecting me to say India, and they're absolutely right insofar as 100 percent of my blood and ancestry does come from India. Except, I've never lived one day of my life there. I can't speak even one word of its more than 22,000 dialects.

I used to feel I was more French than anything, but I don't feel that way anymore. I really don't feel like I belong to a specific country, and it is so difficult for people to understand that.

I was raised in Brussels as a Belgian but, at the same time, feeling that I wasn't necessarily from here.

Unfortunately, I think I drifted so much growing up that I don't have a strong sense of identity. I don't feel at home anywhere, and because of that, I think I'm more of a chameleon.

When I'm in Brazil, I'm not Brazilian at all; I am a gringo. And then when I'm in England, I'm not really English, but when I lived in Canada, I was considered too English. So I never really felt like I clicked somewhere or that I belonged to one place.

Maybe I am not French, maybe I am from nowhere.

When I'd go to Israel, I felt like a tourist. My social and professional ties had started to dissolve, and it confused me. I didn't know whether I should stay here in Paris or go back to Israel, or even cut off all my ties with Israel so I could really plant roots here. Or maybe go somewhere else altogether.

I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum.

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.

Growing up outside your own country makes you feel that you don't belong when you return, so you feel free to make friends with whomever you like.

I was a supporting character in other people's lives, which seemed right and familiar to me. I was also an outsider: English in the U.S., American in England, dogged yet comforted by that familiar feeling of alien-ness, which occupied that space where my sense of self should have been.

I'm British - ostensibly British - but I don't know where I really belong, you know?

Leaving your country at a tender age really rearranges the way you perceive the world. So I feel marginally attached to many places rather than deeply attached to any one place.

I grew up in a Mauritian bubble in France... I had the feeling of not belonging, but still living with French culture.

Although I hold a German passport, I feel very much alienated when I'm there.

I always had this crisis: where do I come from? I was never an insider, never an outsider; I was always in the middle. But it means I never have borders in my head.

Every time someone asks me where I'm from, I'm not sure how to answer that question... so I say I have no roots.