Marlon James Quotes

I feel Scottish when with English people, and when I'm with Scottish people, I realise I'm English.

The Hispanic population in this country is not a monolith. When you're in Miami, the newscast is going to be different from the newscast in Los Angeles.

More often than not, we think of ourselves as black, white, Asian, or Hispanic pretty much in this country, but the real America is much more than that.

The richness of America is that we are diverse. We're not Sweden. We're not Norway. We are a great American experiment. And as soon as we start trying to forget race or turn our back on race, number one, we don't confront the real racial realities that still persist.

Deep down inside, I'm really a black girl stuck in a Mexican girl's body. But I'm also in touch with my inner white girl and my inner Asian girl. I feel like a little bit of everybody.

Dad's Jewish and Irish, Mom's German and Scotch. I couldn't say I was anything. My last name isn't even Downey. My dad changed his name when he wanted to get into the Army and was underage. My real name is Robert Elias. I feel like I'm still looking for a home in some way.

My parents are Polish. I don't know anything about Italian-ness.

For as long as multinational communities have existed, their weak point has always been the relations between different nations.

Irish and Italian are my two favourite people.

My stories deal with multicultural situations as well as multigenerational settings.

I'm writing in English; I'm writing for a Western audience, but the people I'm surrounded by in my daily life are mostly non-white.

Jewish, black, Filipino, whatever the specificity is, it's specificity that makes a good story. And I think people are tired of seeing the same old shtick on network television. It's just a group of white people hanging out talking about their jobs. Who cares? We've seen that.

The West will never understand Muslims so long as we ... judge them by the rules we are accustomed to apply to ourselves.

All these nations and peoples of Europe and Asia will insist upon their independence and their own cultures.

There are men of eighteen different languages; they are scattered here and there upon the [Hudson] river.

… mongrel nation

You need to figure out other societies, where they came from, what the people believe in, what they do, how their ethnic divisions work, which is often very different from our own; then design your policies around that. Pay attention. I think that's the simple answer, which is just to realize that not everybody is like the United States. Whether you study history or sociology, or anthropology, journalism, there's room for seeing there are other cultures and other ways and other structures.

For the Americans, it is not attractive to hear what the similarities are between them and the Iranian people. It is attractive to hear how different the Iranians are.

If, for 2,000 years, you dress up differently, believe in a different God, celebrate different holidays, and on top of it insist on telling everyone that you're completely different than them, ultimately they'll believe you.

In Europe, you have very different situation than you do in the United States. In Europe, it's very segregated. And you have the diasporas in Belgium that I saw. And they're being radicalized because they're not assimilated with the culture. I don't think we have that same situation in the United States.

Our forefathers increased and decreased the influx of peoples because America was building a melting pot and because certain ethnicities often brought with them certain securities and degrees of productivity.

The Italians always know that I'm not Italian.

I grew up in L.A. in a school that was diverse, but it was not really integrated, so I didn't ever fully fit in with the black girls or the white girls or the Latina girls.

When I was growing up, anyone who wasn't white was black. It meant all of us. Though when I was at university, we started to be called Asians.

I'm a member of a very complex and richly valued race.