Ezra Koenig Quotes

I am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don't have to be defined by that.

I'm not talking about Russia in my music. I've never been to Russia. I'm not talking about Africa, Switzerland, China. I'm talking about me being American and growing up in a crazy world and helping to reflect all different sides of life.

I always identified myself as non-Swedish. I was never discriminated against, because I looked Swedish and speak without an accent. But I had an outsider's perspective.

People didn't seem able to consider that maybe both were true. OK, I was born to white parents, but maybe I had an authentic black identity.

I don't really know what feeling Japanese or Haitian or American is supposed to feel like. I just feel like me.

I used to forget that I was an Indian woman. I would even forget that I was a woman. I don't think of myself as bringing to the table a lot of 'women's issues.' I don't feel the need to write about maternity. I grew up thinking that the talented people in comedy were hard-joke writers.

Most of my life I was occupied with American television and American food. My ethnicity was my choice. It still is.

My children don't look Hispanic.

Only when I came to America did I think of myself as British.

Black culture has been a huge influence in my life.

For the last 12 years, I've felt really privileged to be living such a normal life. It's so a part of who I am.

I didn't grow up watching film but as a Ukrainian-American, music and stories and dance are crucial.

I am Ecuadorian but people felt so safe passing me off as a skinny, blue-eyed white girl.

It's important that people understand who I am and where I come from and not just have it shaped by purely political discourse.

Sometimes I have a very fleeting emotional dance with a fleeting phrase, like 'half-Mexican.'

Whatever your ethnicity is, in this life you are going to be on a journey to discover who you are and how you feel about yourself.

From a purely ethnological point of view, I was not a period-born Dada.

Somebody told me once I wasn't Latin enough, and that made me laugh.

There is no singular 'reason' why Africans use fractals, any more than a singular reason why Americans like rock music. Such enormous cultural practices just cover too much social terrain.

The self was a very strange concept to me until I came to America, and my child was born with that entitlement, and that just thrilled me.

I definitely think the fact that I come from a multicultural background, my mother living life in a white skin and having white skin privilege from the time I was little, I was aware of that.

Sure, I've listed myself as Cuban-American. That's my heritage and my background.

A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.

The only thing Oriental about me, is my face.

I grew up in North Dakota around Dakota and Ojibwe people, and also small-town people in Wahpeton. Writers make few choices, really, about their material. We have to write about what comes naturally and what interests us - so I do.