Stefan Persson Quotes

Sweden is famous for many things - but not fashion.

I think I am kind of put on this Earth to speak of being between worlds in my films.

When Pakistan beat England at cricket, my Pakistani cousins remind me how English and British I am. When they say, 'You're one of the Queen's advisers,' for them it's, 'Wow - anything's possible in the U.K.'

As an Egyptian-American, I want both sides of that hyphen to enjoy the forms of freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment, as I want both sides of that hyphen to move beyond the deceptive simplicity of the question, 'Why do they hate us?'

I think my whole identity is formed around not knowing where I'm from. It might even be that I find comfort in that confusion.

I don't fit into the age, race, or class of a bestselling poet.

We were from downtown, so we were rapping in Danceteria, in these white downtown clubs, really. Nobody downtown was rapping. Nobody we knew was rapping. So we were like, 'We should do it.' We weren't making fun of it; we loved it, and we wanted to be part of it.

I feel like Black Thought is a name that has so much meaning and depth, not only to me but to my fans, that it's something that I wanted to hold onto a little bit tighter.

I definitely think it's cool being Puerto Rican and Dominican, but I feel it has no influence on my music.

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.

We're not all Christian, so we can't be a Christian band.

I can be a mix of both. I don't have to be an Indian or an American. They're not mutually exclusive. It's something growing up I didn't know.

I'm not foreign enough to play foreigners... I have sort of a mid-Atlantic British accent that puts me in the middle of everything, so they don't know quite where to put me.

I'm conscious of the fact that I'm sort of a bridging figure. I have my Chinese literary heritage and cultural background, so I'm comfortable with these things, but at the same time, I have to navigate the Anglo-American tradition, which has a self-centred view of what Asia and what being Chinese means.

When I go to Korea and they say, 'Sing like a Korean person,' I can't do it. I didn't grow up with that sound.

I always felt culturally adrift as a child because I'm mixed race. I've had to deal with that since I was little. Who am I? What makeup do I have? What are the black and the white?

It's pretty hard as an Asian rapper to not be put in a box. I do my best to avoid that.

As you can hear, I am English - I am from England - and it was really good playing for Ireland.

I do a very good impersonation of an American - I went to high school here - but I've spent most of my life in Russia.

I always felt that I wasn't as American as Americans and then I realised when I got back to the Philippines that I was not Filipino.

I guess you could say I'm kind of Jewish but not really.

I believe that the environment at home has been fairly secular and liberal. And most times, it comes from my mother. Our culture is very strong, but at the same time, she's a very free-spirited person. She's an artiste, and that's the environment I grew up in, where films and music were respected and meditated upon.

To be a foreigner may be an advantage but disadvantage as well. It was advantage for me for sure.

My accent is very confused.

If it was the '70s, I'd be a punk artist. I was just born into hip-hop.