Kate DiCamillo Quotes

I came from Canada when I was about 10 years old, and our family settled in Cleveland, Ohio.

In 2001, I moved from Philly to Atlanta, where I lived for six years. I had never lived anywhere but Philly, and you can imagine the culture shock; the Civil War seeps into daily life and conversation down South in a way it never does up North.

We moved to Gambia from Sweden when I was six years old because my dad was from there. It was definitely a culture shock.

My mother is American. I first went to school in America, and we came back when I was about six to rural Norfolk. In primary school, I was teased immediately and mercilessly. I probably dropped that accent within about 10 days.

My dad is an ob-gyn - he's retired now - and he wanted to come to the States to make a better life, for opportunity. My mom said that, on the plane ride here, I did not want to speak a word of English - I spoke Tagalog. And then, after the first day of school, I didn't want to speak anything but English.

My mom has an English accent, so we always referred to the trunk as the 'boot.' And then, suddenly, we moved to Georgia and I would say things like 'open the boot' with a bit of an accent, and I quickly realized I had to adapt; that kind of thing will get you beat up!

Actually, I was born in Las Vegas. My parents moved to Utah when I was eight because, after 40 years in Vegas, they were tired of it. We ended up in Nephi, a really small town in Utah.

From 1 till 7, when we moved to England, I spoke only Portuguese.

With my mother, I moved from one household to another before settling in the eastern part of Finland, in the city of Kuopio.

When I was in second grade, my mother moved from Miami to this evangelical conservative environment in western North Carolina, two miles down the road from Billy Graham and his wife, Ruth.

I remembered moving from Sacramento to Los Angeles with my mum when I was seven and my sister was three or four.

I was born in Sacramento but moved to Los Angeles with my mom and my little sister when I was seven.

I was 10 when I left Kulm, N.D. I had a wonderful childhood there, out playing in the mud. We moved to California then, but I still went to Catholic school, didn't grow up very sophisticated or very liberal.

When I was in fifth grade - so, about 11 - my folks moved us to Denmark. And so not only did I have all new friends and all new surroundings, I didn't even understand what they were talking about, which was very difficult and kind of started me, I think, on my path to animation.

When I first moved from Shanghai when I was five, I just thought of myself as Chinese.

I was training in Spain for 15 months, and while I was there, my parents didn't want to be halfway around the world away from their 14-year-old daughter. So they migrated to the U.K. because they had Hungarian passports, and that's in the E.U., so they could work there.

I came to America when I was 7.

It was very difficult to leave Argentina when I was kid, so I only spoke Spanish for the first six years of my life.

When you go apartment-hunting in the South, you encounter little old ladies who ask you if you use strong drink. In New York you encounter paranoids who wonder if you will commit suicide--not that they care; what they worry about is blood on their fresh paint, a dubious smell in the hallway, or a hole in the awning as you pass through on your way to the sidewalk. The Southerner who moves to any part of the country has problems, but the culture shock that attacks the Southerner who moves North is almost indescribable.

The fact that I didn't speak English I think was the most difficult thing for me.

This will sound really funny, but I'm so used to shooting in Hindi that shooting in English took a while to get used to.

When I first arrived in the country, I really didn't speak much of the language. I knew two words coming here, and they were 'Hello' and 'Shut up.'

When I came to California, I came from such an upper scale neighborhood, I was so sheltered, but I always knew I wanted to live in California, and I wanted to play guitar.

When I was 16 I took the first opportunity I had to play basketball in a different country. I flew to Europe for the first time and found myself in the small town of Macon, in France. That was the first time I lived far away from my people, from my culture. I was young and had to adapt quickly.

I'm a first-generation Japanese immigrant.