Daniel Libeskind Quotes

So, you know, I always say that I'm a Mexican, but if I had to be a citizen of anywhere else, I'd be a citizen of Manhattan. I feel very much a New Yorker.

Being an immigrant myself, but feeling very American, and also being the child of immigrants, I understand the feeling of wanting a home.

Ever since I was little, when I moved to Canada, Canada has been my home.

The film 'Documented,' a project of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Define American campaign, is about my families: the family I was blessed to be born into, and the family of friends, mentors and allies that I found when I moved to the United States at 12, a Filipino kid trying to make sense of my new home in America.

As a first generation Jewish American, I have witnessed firsthand Jewish immigrants who have come to this Nation in order to create a better life for themselves, their families, and future generations.

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

I've now been in this country for thirteen years, since I was seventeen. So this is my second home.

When you live in New York, one of two things happen - you either become a New Yorker, or you feel more like the place you came from.

London made my family and myself.

I adopted England as least as much as England adopted me.

They've lived here now for more than half of their lives, and they raised a family here and now have grandchildren here... It has become their home, but at the same time, for my parents, I don't think either of them will ever consciously think, 'I am an American.'

I almost feel like I grew up and was raised in America now, because I'm so comfortable here.

I am more South African than Pakistani now. It's a great country, and I have met so many nice people.

What any immigrant is after is a taste of home.

I think everyone is kind of an immigrant somehow, and I wasn't raised in an American society at home. My household was a Jamaican household, so I got all my traditions, all my roots and culture intact, so I'm able to support both countries.

I'm sort of half-Chilean at this point anyway, half-Argentine. This is where I have been living and working for a long time now.

For me, I'm an American and I'm a Mexican. I live here. And it hurts me the way a lot of people talk about Mexicans when I know we're all about hard work and dedication.

People ask where I'm from, and I say 'Los Angeles.' Then they ask again. 'Well, my parents are from Korea.'

I consider myself a brown American or a man of color before I would say Sri Lankan, to be honest. I didn't grow up there. There was a pretty brutal civil war there from 1983 until 2009. So we weren't able to go back very much. I've gone back as an adult. But I grew up in Pennsylvania.

I never considered myself as somebody in exile because, different to my father who, yes, was in exile because he left Haiti as an adult, for me it was just to be somewhere else. I carried Haiti with me everywhere, but I also carried, you know, my youth in a public school in Brooklyn. It's part of who I am as well.

Ed Koch once said that New York City is where immigrants come to audition for America. That's what happened to my parents; that's what happened to me.

I'll always be a foreigner.

Toronto is a very multicultural city, a place of immigrants, like my parents.

In a land of immigrants, one was not an alien but simply the latest arrival.

I'm interested in people who find themselves in places, either of their choosing or not, and who are forced to decide how best to live there. That feeling of both citizenship and exile, of always being an expatriate - with all the attendant problems and complications and delight.