Mona Eltahawy Quotes

I always traveled. I left Cameroon when I was 11 years old. I lived in the USA, in Switzerland.

I am originally a surd who was born in Delhi in 1982, just two years before the Sikh riots, so all my childhood pictures are in baby frocks with ponytails, as my parents wanted to hide the fact that I was a Sikh boy, given the riots. My dad worked for a travel agency, and we soon moved to Saudi Arabia.

I was born in East Germany, before the wall came down. We sort of escaped, I guess. I grew up all over the place. Germany, London, back and forth between Minnesota and Germany. I was sort of an army brat, but not in the army.

To all those mothers and fathers who are struggling with teen-agers, I say, just be patient: even though it looks like you can't do anything right for a number of years, parents become popular again when kids reach 20.

There are so many times there could have been a left turn instead of a right turn in all people's lives. I think mine are pretty crystal clear, because of being adopted, being born in Ethiopia, being adopted to Sweden.

All my cousins are almost old enough to start seeing my movies. I'm going to have some 'splainin' to do.

An adolescent is somebody who is in between things. A teenager is somebody who's kind of permanently there. And so living with them through the various teenage hopes and sorrows and joys was curiously enough a maturing experience for me.

I was born in France. I grew up in Africa.

I believe that the dysfunctional Muslim family constitutes a real threat to the very fabric of western life. It is in the family that children are groomed to practise, promote and pass on the norms of their parents' culture.

I move countries every three or four years. I was born in London, and we lived in Canada. Then we lived in Saudi Arabia until the Gulf War broke out, when we were forced to leave. Then we hop-scotched for a while from Holland back to Canada back to Saudi Arabia. Then there was D-day, so we had to get out again.

I was 15 when my family moved to Jidda from Britain in 1982. Living in Saudi Arabia was such a shock to my system that I like to say I was traumatized into feminism.

When I was 10 years old, we moved to Spain with my mother. I learned Spanish before I learned English. But the English language stayed with me.

There are co-ed schools in Saudi, but those are American or British. My dad, of course, believed in the good old CBSE Indian school system and thus, my younger brother Ishmeet and I were put in an all-boys CBSE school. My mother could move out only if she wore a burkha.

We immigrated when I was 3 1/2 years old, to Toronto. But I'm still very, very close to my culture and - back home in Egypt.

We were Londoners for about seven years during the decade they called the naughties. My first son, Finn, was born over there. He's actually very proud of that fact.

I was born in Canada, and then my dad played pro soccer in England and then also on an island off the coast of Portugal. So we lived there for, like, 10 years. And then we moved to Minnesota. So I feel like I've experienced a lot of different cultures, and I'm still figuring out who I am.

I was born in Pondicherry. Both my parents are French. They met in Pondicherry in the '70s, got married, and stayed back in India.

Certain stories, like my mom leaving when I was 15-years-old to go back to China because she didn't quite assimilate like we did, that was a moment that was very sad in my life.

I grew up in Mexico until I was 16, and then we moved to San Antonio because my dad's business was headquartered there.

I was actually born in Belgium and lived there until I was 11, then moved to Australia for a year, then moved to New Zealand, so I only lived there from when I was 12 to 18.

N.E.R.D. was also from - not too far from where I was from growing up. For a lot of people who make music, that was a huge influence in teen years.

My mother gave birth to me at Fort McPherson in Atlanta, Georgia. A short while later we were living in Stuttgart, Germany.

I've lived in so many different countries over the years. I spent most of my early life in the UK, five years in Germany and summers in Austria before moving to Paris.

I spent seven years in France. Then, I went to Asia for five years. I came to London in 1984 and then America in 1985. In 1991, I opened my first restaurant in New York City.

Growing up, I didn't realize how unique it was to live on the border of the United States and Mexico. It wasn't until I started doing interviews with the press that I actually began to appreciate just how cool it was that I would cross the international border every single day from Tijuana into San Diego to go to school.