J. M. Coetzee Quotes

We quarrel with no man for being a foreigner, but we recognize the moral right in no class of American citizens to train up their children to be foreigners, and then to claim for them all the rights, franchises, and immunities of American citizens.

It's my country but I don't want to know about France - I was born there but I feel English.

It's a complicated issue, but I define myself as an American, primarily.

What makes America special is that people come here, assimilate and become American with all of the rights and responsibilities citizenship bestows.

I'm so proud of my Chinese ancestry, but I was born and raised in America, and I really believe in American values, our American system, our freedom, our liberties.

We used to have a view that to really be a good Australian, to love Australia, you almost had to cut your links with the country of origin. But I don’t think that was right and it never was right.

The fallacies of the Melting Pot theory have also become obvious. Years before the war [WWI] it had become increasingly apparent that the Melting Pot was no longer successfully performing its function; that the American population was losing its homogeneous character; that various nationalities of recent immigrants were forming more and more compact racial "blocs," each bloc tenaciously maintaining its own racial character, customs, and traditions.

My son will be an American, but I remain French.

It was very hard for me, for most of my life, to feel American, or call myself American, and that is a very complicated topic that would require a very long conversation.

I don't necessarily feel like I'm American. I wouldn't know what that feels like.

I like to see the kids in my area wearing England shirts, not Pakistan or India ones. A lot of it comes from the older generations but it's changing slowly, especially if people like myself and Ravi Bopara are playing for England.

I'm still a proud Irishman, of course, but I've become an American citizen. I'm very, very proud of that.

I'm three quarters Scottish, but I sound English. I don't really see British as a race.

You can't be an American without being related to other Americans.

I come from an immigrant family, but I know no other nationality apart from British.

I was born in America, but I consider myself a Filipino.

It's a project that touched me as an immigrant and as a New Yorker.

Yeah, I think that's sort of the American way. And it's also the Polish way, it turns out.

My parents were French and Irish and our family even has Spanish blood-and I do so love the United States and consider myself part American.

I've always wanted to be able to say that I come from Los Angeles, California and feel quintessentially American - even if I said that in Spanish.

In a funny way, nothing makes you feel more like a native of your own country than to live where nearly everyone is not.

The other aspect of American identity worth focusing on is the concept of America as a nation of immigrants. That certainly is a partial truth. But it is often assumed to be the total truth.

By virtue of my traditions, and my community, I worked hard to ensure that I was accepted as part of the traditional family of America.

I really do feel part of America to my very bones; at the same time, I know that I come from somewhere else.

In North America, what happens often is that they put race before nationhood. Everyone here is Hispanic-American, Chinese-American, African-American. But really, we're just North Americans of all these different descents. The only time I notice North Americans becoming national is when a war happens or a crisis happens.