Maggie Q Quotes

I've often gone to start a film only to find the producers surprised to discover that I'm American.

People ask me where I'm from. I say Ireland, and they are like 'Really? You don't look Irish.' Then you have to explain... people are intrigued, but sometimes you think, 'Why do I have to tell my whole story every time I open my mouth?

People often expect that I should know a lot of things because I'm black. I don't really explain it to people, but it's like, I'm from Australia, my Mum's Aussie, and I grew up with five other Aussie brothers and sisters.

I have blonde hair and blue eyes, and whenever I tell people I'm Greek, they don't believe me.

One stereotype I get a lot as an Asian actress is that you're playing the model minority - that Asians are the best, that they're perfect and positively moral all the time.

I meet people and a lot of times, instead of saying, "Are you from the East Coast?" people just go, "you're from the East Coast, right?", having no reason to have known that. I don't know what that is. Maybe it's just that I'm Jewish.

The problem with labels is that they lead to stereotypes and stereotypes lead to generalizations and generalizations lead to assumptions and assumptions lead back to stereotypes. It’s a vicious cycle, and after you go around and around a bunch of times you end up believing that all vegans only eat cabbage and all gay people love musicals.

From my situation as an African American person in the U.S., people may look at me and think a certain thing without getting to know me. I'm of Nigerian and Caribbean heritage. I went to Yale. What you see is not what you think you're getting.

For publicity purposes, everything gets simplified, and the fact that I wear glasses and am somewhat bookish makes me a geek. That's fine; there needs to be a shorthand, but there are important geek traits that I don't really share.

There was always a struggle with being Asian and not being Asian enough. It's going to be down to me to own my race.

Maybe you don't know who a person is just based on the way they dress. I know that's a really simple thing you're supposed to be taught really young, but sometimes you can forget.

Since I worked with Prince, people assumed that I was black.

I'm not the standard Asian girl.

I never tried to emulate that New York rap style. What I do is a quasi rap. It's a honky rap, not a black rap. I find it puzzling that so many people have assumed I'm black.

I actually thought when I met Tina, my former wife, that she was White. Later I found out that she wasn't, and she was actually very much in-tune with her Blackness.

People who think they know me would be surprised that my whole life doesn't revolve around sex.

I won’t react to something just because I’m supposed to, because I’m an African-American.

I hope you didn't bring the Asian kid along thinking he's a computer genius. Because I'm not," Takumi said.

People are taking it for granted that [the Negro] ought not to work with his head. And it is so easy for these people among whom we are living to believe this; it flatters and satisfies their self-complacency.

With little knowledge of what it meant to be a Jew, I found myself passionately defending the Jewish people. Now, half a century later, I have to defend my son. Anti-Semitism, I've seen, is like a disease that goes dormant, flaring up with the next political trigger.

It's interesting how when you walk into a room in LA there's a sense of what you walk in, as is sort of what you can do. So I spent a lot of time choosing different things to hopefully show people that maybe that's not the case.

People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they're African American. They're not us. They're impostors.

People think because I'm shaped this way, I'm scandalous

You're never going to get beyond other people's preconceptions of what you are and what you're about.

People have a preconceived notion about who I am and it's interesting. It's like picking who you want to win for the Oscars and not seeing the movie.