Hiam Abbass Quotes

I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me.

You have to go through a mental and emotional process to recognize who you really are. I finally recognized that I cannot be defined by one country.

But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director.

I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?' " 'The way I want it?' " 'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?' " 'What'st eh point? I can't change it.' " 'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.' " 'Mess it up how?' " 'Forgot it.' " 'Forgot?' " 'Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else.

Being Nigerian is a strong part of my identity. Being American is a strong part of my identity. And there are important parts of who I am that really have nothing to do with my national connection.

Ironically, it was because I was raised as a Muslim in the South, that I realised the value in being true to who you really are. I've just got so many things going on inside. I don't know how to resolve all of them other than being true to who I am.

I think that is a universal adolescent feeling, trying to find your place. The adolescent who is perfectly adjusted to his environment, I've yet to meet.

I want to continue to be me and share with people.

Teenagers today are more free to be themselves and to accept themselves.

For Americans I'll always be Israeli, and for Israelis I'll always be American. But I really have no need for definitions.

I always tried so hard to fit in, and then I figured out that I didn't want to fit.

I enjoy just being me. I don't need to be Queen Latifah, the brand, 24 hours a day.

We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too.

There's absolutely no way you can feel the freedom to embarrass and humiliate yourself unless you have finally recognized that your identity is in someone other than yourself.

The essential problems remain the same... The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wanted. They want two contradictory things. They want to be the same as everyone else, and they want to be different from everyone else. They want acceptance for both.

I don't know what else I would be if I wasn't me. I am not looking from the outside, looking back. I am who I am.

Because of my unique experience as my mom's child, the beginning of my journey was more about me trying to figure out who I was on my own. My mom is one of the greatest moms and so supportive of all my siblings and of all of us being who we are, and not who she wanted us to be.

Be yourself. I had this three-week period where I wore this straw fedora. I thought it was what chicks wanted. And then it dawned on me that I was trying to be something that I wasn't, so I took the fedora off. So be yourself.

I've never, ever labeled myself.

I don't think we spend enough time in reflection and introspection. We don't know who we are as individuals in this culture anymore.

Remember to always be yourself.

For me, the teen years were all about searching for a place for myself, wondering why I seemed so different than everyone else, wondering especially why no one could look past the surface and figure out who I really was underneath.

I exist in this hyphen. I'm an Indian-American-Muslim kid, but am I more Indian, or am I more American? What part of my identity am I?

It was very hard for me, for most of my life, to feel American, or call myself American, and that is a very complicated topic that would require a very long conversation.

It's something I've enjoyed since being a kid, the fantasy of it, the imagining I'm someone other than who I am. I've always felt claustrophobic in one sense of identity. If anything, I've had to work to develop a sense of my own identity. I used to really hate it when people defined me.