Quotes About Belonging

I had family and friends back home. Just because I could potentially feel alone in Los Angeles, that didn't mean I was alone.

I read so much Harry Potter, that's, like, all I wanted to talk about. I watched stuff like 'Lizzie McGuire.' I watched things that were very mainstream but white, and I went to a predominately white school.

The Conservative Party must be a party for all of its members.

I consider myself a Chicagoan, and if anybody else does, that gratifies me.

I consider myself to be a citizen of the world.

I very much consider myself British.

I just don't consider myself to be, you know, an American actor. I don't want that life.

I always consider myself a Hyderabadi; my roots are here.

No matter how American I become, I'm considered part of the Chinese community by my own family.

I never considered myself as part of a biracial family - we're just a family - but my parents are white, and my brother is Asian.

I don't know if I'm ever considered a part of the community I'm in.

Although I have lived in London, I have never really considered London my home because it was always going to be a stopping-off point for me, and it has been too.

When you're Jamaican, you don't consider yourself African American even though everyone else considers you that.

America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.

Self-doubt is a constant companion for a chubby, gay, black boy born in the South.

I'd never been content in America.

There's no real test of how Asian you need to be to be able to own your Asianness, and it's always going to be an area of contention.

When you're looking back at your ancestral history or the cultural context of your identity, it's natural to search for that in the food.

It's nice to have some continuity you can come back to. I feel that in coming home, coming back to London.

I'm a walking contradiction on so many levels. I'm gay, black, and a Christian.

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.

Even if you have something that you can contribute to society, very often society doesn't view you that way. Because when you are The Other, the first response by the mainstream, if you will, is to ostracize.

When you live in a place, you're not just taking from it, you're contributing to it. In America I would never be able to make myself a person who could contribute. I wasn't interested in that society; I was interested in this society.

I think if I'm controversial it's not because I set out to be. It's because I've never felt comfortable being part of someone else's mainstream community.