David Burtka Quotes

People would write me hate letters. How dare I try to represent Hispanics when I was so white? I tried to make them see it was racism.

I'm Italian. I wouldn't know how to play a Jew.

I'm 100 percent Irish by birth, grew up Italian, and yet I constantly get cast as playing Jewish.

The Jews are a race and not a religion. My goal was not to persecute the Jews but to enlighten Gentiles to put them on guard.

Montreal is a very cosmopolitan, sophisticated, erudite, educated, glorious city today. But it wasn't quite that way when I was growing up there. There was a lot of anti-Semitism. And I had to deal with that in an area of the city that had very few Jews.

I'm very happy to have the heritage that I do, but I'm not wanting to be 'the Latino actor.' I just want to be 'an actor.'

I had to tell people I was not born with a scarf because I came out Iran. People think you came out of your mother with a scarf; they can't imagine that the scarf is not stuck to your head.

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.

Hey, I may loathe myself, but it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm Jewish.

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

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

Not only do I not want to be stereotyped as this Asian girl who fights - gee, what a wonder - but also I have more to offer than that.

At my advanced age, I know I am not an anti-Semite, not even vaguely or remotely, but others would seem to know better, as false accusers always do.

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

Judaism is a conspiracy against all races.

I think my sense of humor is Jewish. I'm smarter than most white people, which is kind of a Jewish thing, too.

Yes, I'm blonde. When I started as an actor, because of the accent and my body and my personality, it was not what the stereotype of the Latina woman in Hollywood is, so they didn't know where to put me. The blond hair wasn't matching. The moment I put my hair dark, it was better for my work.

I'm half Jewish, but no one believes me because my looks lean a little WASP-y... It's sometimes hard for me to get the roles I'm drawn to.

You'd never know that listening to people in the UN but tribalism is the father of racism.

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.

All labels are offensive in some way.

Well, I try to not view things through a prism of anti-Semitism, because often, people will use that as a sort of knee-jerk reaction to any criticism of Jews.

If I was in a room with a bunch of skinheads talking about racism, then I would be disturbed, but after we finished a take, we were normal people again.

If you ever forget you're a Jew, a Gentile will remind you.

To purposely concoct older characters of a sunny disposition would be as much of a solecism as deliberately fabricating arrhythmic blacks, spendthrift Jews, slacker Japanese and so on.