Junot Diaz Quotes

I was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States with my family when I was 4. I spent most of my childhood in Chicago. My elementary school had no program in English as a second language, so I was placed in a class for students with speech impediments.

When my mom, Mercedes, and her younger sister, Juanita, first came from Puerto Rico, they were the youngest in the family. They had to jump into a new community and really learn English, assimilate, and adapt - and I saw that. I grew up in that community.

My mom had been a script supervisor in Hungary, but you can't just jump into that in Canada without knowing any English. She worked retail jobs and raised my sister and me while learning English.

Being here in the United States, English is not my first language. It's kind of a challenge for me, a big challenge for my family.

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

I came to this country when I was 13 years old, I couldn't really speak English, and I had an accent.

Our parents decided not to teach us Chinese. It was an era when they felt we would be better off if we didn't have that complication.

It's fascinating when you're from another place, but you don't speak the language.

When I first came to this country, I didn't know how to speak English.

I'm first generation in the country - my family's Mexican.

I didn't speak English until I came to Pittsburgh.

Most previous immigrants came to the United States to become Americans, with no intention of returning home. They relinquished their ties with their homeland. English was their key to prosperity, and they worked hard to master it.

Never far from my thoughts are memories of being a little girl in Queens, N.Y., our family of five crowded in a small one-bedroom apartment, struggling to learn English and survive a new life in a new country, America. We humbly and gratefully still recall the kindnesses shown by strangers and neighbors who became new friends.

I can speak English on the field but it's difficult with media.

I moved to Queens, New York, when I was seven and a half. I went to middle school in a foreign country, but I had so many different kinds of Americans push me along and encourage me. I was very odd. I didn't talk very well. We were poor, and we didn't have any connections, but people showed up and pushed me along.

When I went to school, I didn't know a lick of English, but it was okay because there were so many immigrants in the area, a lot of the kids didn't speak a lick of English, either. It was normal to have a wicked accent.

I'm an immigrant, and I think being an outsider in your home is something that I really relate to.

I moved to New York when I was eight years old, in 1978. I grew up in Manhattan. I couldn't speak any English, and I had dyslexia, so it took me many years before I could read.

For me, as an immigrant who didn't speak the language, when I would have struggles as a kid, my dad would say, 'Once you are able to communicate with people, they're able to connect with you beyond your otherness.' That is really the message I've carried throughout my life.

When I was 11, I moved to the United States with my two brothers and my mom. We moved to northern New York, up near the Canadian border, from Argentina, and there was nobody there that spoke Spanish, and because there was no internet at the time, not even cable TV yet, I lost the connection with my childhood friends and the culture I had been brought up with for my first decade completely.

I'm a first-generation Japanese immigrant.

I grew up in an immigrant household with an Italian father who came to the U.S. when he was 15.

My dad looked like Errol Flynn, and I think my mom thought she was moving into a hacienda, but they lived on a dirt street in Tijuana, a house jammed with relatives, nobody speaking English. She didn't know a word of Spanish. She grew up well and was appalled and humiliated, terrified of anyone ethnic.

I was only 19 when I came to Hoffenheim. Everything was new to me - a strange country, a foreign language. That was not easy at the beginning. Europe was a big adventure to me, and of course I had my doubts.

When I came here I moved to London and I was meeting so many new people and had to speak only in English, which is not my native language.