Olga Tokarczuk Quotes

Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels.

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

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.

For decades, Indians have immigrated to the United States, joined our communities, and raised their families while maintaining their cultural heritage.

Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization

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.

One of the unique features of China is that, notwithstanding the fact that it has a population of 1.3 billion, around 92% regard themselves as Han Chinese. This is quite different from the world's other most populous countries, such as India, the U.S. and Indonesia, which are ethnically diverse.

I grow up in the States, in Miami, but I was born in Guatemala, and my father's Cuban, and in 'Body of Lies,' I played an Iraqi.

My mother is French-Italian with a little Spanish blood in her. I've been raised, and she was, as far as I know, raised as a Christian.

It seems to me that the idea traditionally defended of endeavoring to maintain existing ethnic balances simply doesn't work any more.

I'm about as Chinese as Herbert Hoover.

In Sweden, I went to an English school, where there was a mishmash of people from all over the world. Some were diplomatic kids with a lot of money, some were ghetto kids who came up from the suburbs, and I grew up in between. There's a community of second generation immigrants, and I became part of that because I had an American father.

America is not a melting pot. It is a sizzling cauldron.

Rather than be asked to abandon one's own heritage and to adapt to the mores of the new country, one was expected to possess a treasure of foreign skills and customs that would enrich the resources of American living.

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.

I think of myself as being Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I'm English.

I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted.

Sweden was once a very homogenous society, but no more. For decades, people have been coming into Sweden from all over the world, and that's changed the way we cook.

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

America is this incredible mosaic of immigrants, so people really want to be anchored in some kind of culture as well as the one they are living in.

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

The Indo-Canadian community has been a microcosm of the people of Indian origin living abroad besides reflecting India's diversity.

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.

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 can make the United States a 'Hispanic Quebec' without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity.