Jhumpa Lahiri Quotes

There are a lot of people in Beverly Hills who come from the Middle East, who are very much a part of the Beverly Hills fabric, and their kids grew up with the privileges of Beverly Hills. And yet they still have to deal with a lot of the prejudice against them for being foreign-born.

I was raised to be kind. My parents were underdogs. Immigrant Jews. I spoke with an accent. I didn't speak English even - I spoke French and Yiddish mostly. I was picked on.

I remember people saying: 'You look funny, your hair is so black, you have a flat nose,' but I didn't think of it being racism, and I still don't. But there was a sense of difference, of being an outsider.

You don't have to be a certain thing to be cool. If you're white, you don't have to act black or whatever. Just be you and know who you are.

Increasingly I feel like a Jew, an immigrant, a Russian - anything but a normal, mainstream American.

When you are in America, at least for me, as an immigrant, I try to be as Americanized as I could. I just want to be an actor, I don't just want to be an Asian actor necessarily.

I'm an honest man. I am living my life. I'm not stealing. And I've never been ashamed of who I am - I am a Roma.

My parents were first-generation immigrants. My mum wore a sari but at school and as a teenager and in my 20s I wanted to fit in.

Kids used to say stuff all the time about how I was different.

I've lived 16, 17 years of my life in Asia, and that's most of my life. I was born in Asia - I've lived cultures that are synonymous with Asian culture - but it's still not Asian enough for some people.

I think that the shame of being different is very painful for a lot of people.

Since I can remember, being different was always hard around normal people. That's just how it is, whether you have vitiligo, a deformity, or a different way of thinking or dressing. It's going to always be weird for normal people.

When I was small, I thought I was just cooler than my mom because of how foreign she is. She's really foreign. You'd think it would kill her to get store-bought snacks, she's that foreign.

'Hispanic' is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. 'Latino' is the word we have always used for ourselves.

You don't have to fight against being placed in a box any more than the number two has to fight against being the number three. I mean, two is not going to be the number three, ever.

It wasn't until school that we realised that we were abnormal.

If you're already somebody who's feeling different, you'll do everything in your power to fix it because children will do everything in their power to fit in and assimilate.

'Be faithful to your roots' is the liberal version of 'Stay in your ghetto.'

Every race is totally different.

In my blood there is no Jewish blood. In their callous rage, all anti-Semites must hate me now as a Jew. For that reason I am a true Russian.

I mean, a Mexican boy couldn't be anything else but an Indian. And why did you take the name of Quinn, they used to say to me. Hey, you're an Indian, so I played Indians.

The conformist understands that the reason of his desperate look for conformism is that he realises he is different and that he never accepted his difference.

I'm a little bit of everything. Sometimes people think I'm not Puerto Rican, because my name doesn't sound Spanish.

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

I am Chinese - it doesn't matter what other people say.