Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

I was born in Romania and later lived in Vienna, Austria, for a few years, and I eventually made my way over to New York in '95.

I left Colombia because Univision brought me to the United States.

If you are unhappy with the United States. pick a better country and go live there.

People don't know what it's like being the foreigner until they are one.

I was born in Leningrad, U.S.S.R., before my father got an appointment at a university in Italy and we moved to Italy. I spend a few years there before my family returned to Russia.

Moving to India was challenging being a foreigner. I don't have any family here. I didn't have anyone to guide me. But I never felt for a second that I am not welcome here.

I was born and raised in West Hills. I moved to Korea when I was 15. I've been back and forth since.

… we shall have to accept, I think, that free and mobile passage of the immigrant between America and his native land again which now arouses so much prejudice among us. We shall have to accept the immigrant's return for the same reason that we consider justified our own flitting about the earth. To stigmatize the alien who works in America for a few years and returns to his own land, only perhaps to seek American fortune again, is to think in narrow nationalistic terms. It is to ignore the cosmopolitan significance of this migration. It is to ignore the fact that the returning immigrant is often a missionary to an inferior civilization.

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.

It [being an immigrant] gave me a huge advantage. Being an immigrant is the best of both worlds. You’re programmed two different ways. You’re bringing the best from your culture—and Hispanic culture has so many great things—and mixing it with the greatest country in the world. That gives us an advantage in comparison to somebody who was born in the U.S., went to school here, and the U.S. is all they’ve seen. We’ve seen the other side.

There are neighborhoods in France that are not French… Why would immigrants want to change France is they left their country to live in France? .. You have two kinds of people living in France: The French and the others…. To offer something to the world, France has to remain France.|

I'm a well-travelled person.

Those who came to France came to find France, not to turn it into their country of origin. If that's what they wanted, they should've stayed in their country.

I think it's important to be reminded that that's what this country is comprised of - people from other countries.

In order to live in a different country, you have to love something there. You have to love something there. You have to love either the spirit of the laws or the economic opportunities, or the - well, history of the country, the language perhaps, literature.

I'm French - it's less important. Meaning, I remain a Frenchman in America, but I adapt to American culture. I feel good there - but I'm still a foreigner.

I grew up in the States and Canada for a while because my mum came over in the 1970s. We lived in Los Angeles for a couple of years and then moved to Canada for a few more.

I used to joke that I came to England - not to the U.S. where most Koreans go - because I like Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.

I certainly have no plans to quit the United States.

I want to stay in England.

I know that if I have come to Britain, I must adapt, and I will try to.

I actually love the challenge of being in a new place where I'm so obviously the foreigner.

When I was 12 years old, living in Cairo, my parents enrolled me in the American school. Most of the Americans there appeared oddly stifled, determined to remain, if not physically then sentimentally, back in the United States.

We have a lot of Brazilians in the United States. It doesn't mean we're traitors to our country.

When I first came to this country I was this new kid from the Caribbean. England was a rude awakening for me.