Anton Chekhov Quotes

I'm bicultural, and everyone sees me as a Latina, but in my head I see myself as both Latina and American.

I'm as proud to be Chinese as I am American.

I was raised in Brussels as a Belgian but, at the same time, feeling that I wasn't necessarily from here.

I grew up thinking of myself as an American but also, because of my parents and the Iranian culture that was in our home, as an Iranian. So if there's any such thing as dual loyalty, then I have it - at least culturally.

The Philippines, it might be said, is a country in search of an identity.

I feel Scottish when with English people, and when I'm with Scottish people, I realise I'm English.

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

Being American and being an outsider at the same time, it's a perspective I often bring to a character.

I knew from an early age that people didn't see the different sides of me. I formulated a kind of bi-cultural identity quite early, and I was always very comfortable with it, but I knew people didn't quite see that.

One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Sometimes my ethnicity is relevant, other times not. I definitely get the best of both worlds.

My family comes from New Zealand, but I'm a London girl. I was born and raised in London, but I've got the blood of a New Zealander, so I always kind of felt like I didn't belong - in a good way.

The American society around me looked at me and saw Japanese. Then, when I was 19, I went to Japan for the first time. And suddenly - what a shock - I realized I wasn't Japanese; they saw me as American. It was an enormous relief. Now I just appreciate being exactly in the middle.

My closest friends from Israel make fun of me for becoming an American, and my American friends make fun of how Israeli I am... I can't win.

We are Americans when we go to war, and when we return, we are Mexicans.

My hero wants to belong too, but he doesn't want to give up all the things he came to value in the west.

Russians call me German, Germans call me Russian, Jews call me a Christian, Christians a Jew.

A writer has a difficult fate, but a Jewish writer has an especially difficult fate. His soul is torn; he lives on two streets with three languages. It is a misfortune to live on this sort of 'border,' and that is what I have experienced.

I have no idea how I'm perceived in America because I don't live the reality of America.

If you take my own life, the longer you stay in a country, you almost lose your former self and become this third-party person who is caught in between two worlds.

Thematically, in a lot of what I write, there's a sense of displacement, of being rooted in multiple places, and how that can tug at your identities and your wants and your goals.

Turkey is an Eastern country if you come from the West and a Western country if you come from the East

We [American Blacks] are a nation within a nation, looking for a nationality

… cultural pride can turn, too often, into an endeavor to normalize one's culture. The quest for identity can then become an exclusionary process - so that we define ourselves less by what we are FOR and more by whom we are AGAINST. When this happens, diversity turns quickly from a source of beauty to a cause of discord.

My mom works at the VA; she's been working at the VA for 15 plus years, and yet she's helping so many veterans coming back from brown Muslim countries, and my mom treats them. It's this weird - sometimes I feel torn. It's this dual identity. I'm so proud to be American, and at the same time, I disagree with our foreign policy.