Sami Zayn Quotes

We all want to be identified as someone cool, and I have struggled with repping where I'm from and my heritage before. It's part of growing pains. But when people see me being proud of what I am - and they are what I am too - it makes them proud. That's why I try to represent my Asian and my black side.

To hang out in a gay bar or put on a sequined halter top makes me feel like a total person.

I think it's important to be extremely proud of one's origins, especially when you are a foreign actress with ethnic features.

I give a speech to the black freshmen at Harvard each year, and I say, 'You can like Mozart and ice hockey...' - and then I used to say 'golf,' but Tiger took over golf! - 'and Picasso and still be as black as the ace of spades.'

Not only do I not want to be stereotyped as this Asian girl who fights - gee, what a wonder - but also I have more to offer than that.

If I don't get a TV show next year because someone looks up my Wikipedia and it says 'openly gay,' then it's worth the risk because I've had so many years being openly gay and proud of myself as a role model.

I love the mixture that's in me. It makes me me. And that's why it's such a shame that people waste energy in denying who they are.

What's so kind of beautiful about the whole thing was that everything that made me not right for all of those hundreds of commercial auditions that I went on and no one ever wanted me for is what made me perfectly right for 'Real Women Have Curves'.

The lack of diversity, specifically in genre films and the superheroes our kids grow up watching and emulating, they can't really identify with. When you see the same thing, over and over again, and it seems not to speak of you and your heritage and your culture, it leaves you out of this world a little bit.

I'm proud of my roots. There are not many Asians in the music industry so it's important for me to tell people where I'm from.

'Latina' has become part of the Becky G family, and I feel very proud to say that.

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.

I think that anybody coming out and saying, 'This is who I am, and let me show it to you...' is good for the world.

There's kind of a gift in being gay because, if you come out, you're forced to express yourself.

I'm Puerto Rican, but I represent everybody.

When I was growing up, I felt like I had to qualify it and say I'm British-Pakistani. But now I kind of feel like, in this day in age, this is what British looks like. It looks like me; it looks like Idris Elba, and hopefully through Nasir Khan, people will see that that's what an American can look like as well.

When I first came out, I was wearing full-on traditional Nigerian wear. I got told by a lot of people that I should just tone it down. I only stopped when I realized there's only so many prints you can wear.

Of course I want the things I write to reflect well on me or anyone who might feel represented by me, but also, I'm not writing a guidebook on how to be or how my people should be seen. I'm telling very specific stories.

I'm so proud that now you can exist as a gay man and be an Olympian, and it can be beneficial rather than negative. So it's amazing. And I just think I feel so liberated now that I've been out of the closet for a while, and so I'm free in that I just get to be myself, speak freely, act freely, and I think that I am competing confidently.

It's okay, it's cool to be Indian and there are cool people that are Indian and doing really well. It's okay to be brown and cool.

I feel that its important for me to be out there and to represent the face. At the same time, for me as an individual, I think the Asian-American face can be crowded with the American identity.

Representation is very important to everyone, but especially to girls like me, and people like me, whether it be because of my body, because of my race, because of my skin color, because of my awkwardness or where I come from.

I'm very happy to have the heritage that I do, but I'm not wanting to be 'the Latino actor.' I just want to be 'an actor.'

I am a super-confident writer, and as a joke writer and as an actress, I'm like, 'I want to go head-to-head with every person.' I am an Indian woman and I'm a kind of double minority in this world.

I am a woman, and I am a Latina. Those are the things that make my writing distinctive. Those are the things that give my writing power.