Joe Eszterhas Quotes

I came to this country when I was 13 years old, I couldn't really speak English, and I had an accent.

I know that if I have come to Britain, I must adapt, and I will try to.

It is not easy to arrive in a different country and adapt quickly, but I think I'm getting there, and I'm proud of that.

My father, when he arrived in this country found it difficult.

I have lived in the United States for half of my life, my entire adult life.

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

The first 10 years of my life, I lived as 'Matangi.' When I came to England in '86, my first week of school was terrible because I would put my hand up to answer things, and no one would choose me because they couldn't say my name. My auntie came from Europe to visit us, and she was like, 'Just call yourself something else.'

My mother is American. I first went to school in America, and we came back when I was about six to rural Norfolk. In primary school, I was teased immediately and mercilessly. I probably dropped that accent within about 10 days.

I was born in Costa Rica and we moved to America where it was a whole new world for me.

My dad is an ob-gyn - he's retired now - and he wanted to come to the States to make a better life, for opportunity. My mom said that, on the plane ride here, I did not want to speak a word of English - I spoke Tagalog. And then, after the first day of school, I didn't want to speak anything but English.

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.

Anyone that has come to America past the age of eighteen will be able to understand when I say that you can never shake your accent.

I was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States with my family when I was 4. I spent most of my childhood in Chicago. My elementary school had no program in English as a second language, so I was placed in a class for students with speech impediments.

I consider myself Russian-American because I'm American by ethnicity and by passport, but I spent all my forming years over in the former Soviet Union in a Russian school. I never went to an American school. There was a lot of culture shock when I moved back to the States when I was 17.

I refused to learn English for two years when we moved to London, hoping to send my family back home. It was tough, but at the same time, it has given me a sense of displacement that actually really suits the life that I'm living now.

I'm from the Philippines and I moved to this country when I was 16.

I've gotten used to being a foreigner.

I was just stunned when I came to America. I didn't know anything about rock music or football, and I felt very out of it... America was like a foreign country to me at first.

I was born in Taiwan and came to the United States when I was 2.

Definitely that was a big part of my childhood: wanting to fit. As an immigrant, you talk funny, you look funny, you smell funny. I wanted to do nothing but fit in and talk English and sit with everybody else.

My biggest struggle was probably having to move from the Dominican to the United States to go to high school. Moving to Michigan, the weather, the language, I didn't speak English at all. That adjustment for me was difficult at the beginning.

I arrived in the U.S.A. in 1935, to San Francisco. I got the boat from China, and I didn't even speak English. I could read a little, perhaps write a little, but that was all. It was a 17-day journey, and I learnt to speak English from the stewards.

In Italy, I had many problems… I wanted to find a city, a team, that from the beginning welcomed me.

I came to the States when I was ten, and that was, in many ways, very hard.

My grandfather came over from Puerto Rico and raised his kids speaking English so that it would be easier for them to assimilate.