Quotes About Belonging

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

I might just not be a big-city bug.

We are building together a nation in which there are no second-class Australians.

So I built my entire career in the United States and that's why it feels like I'm an American actor.

Growing up, at that time, I didn't want to be black because I was bullied, and I'd tell my mum that I wanted to be white like everyone else at school.

I wasn't bullied or anything, but I didn't really fit in.

I got bullied so much growing up for being a different color in a majority white school.

All I can say is sometimes home gets burned into your occipital lobe, and it can't leave you, and there's always that longing.

Assimilation, not success, is the American end game.

For us to become a nation, everyone - including Arabs, Druze, ultra-Orthodox and new immigrants - must feel that they belong. Their success is extremely important to us. If they succeed, they will come to understand the advantages of democracy and freedom.

Most successful musicals need to attach themselves to something bigger than themselves, a concept that will make people feel immediately connected to it.

For years within the group I felt very overlooked and invisible, and I carried these feelings for such a long time. I just felt like no matter what I did, it was never on par with the other girls in the group.

Is there such a thing as black art? Or are there just artists who are black?

Our mission... it will be difficult, it will take time, it will be demanding for all men and women... will be to act in such a way that French people of the Muslim faith are always more proud of being French than of being Muslim.

I was made fun of by a lot of other kids in such a way that I didn't feel like I was human.

There was that feeling of standing on the podium and listening to someone else's national anthem that really sucked.

My dad is actually from Ghana in West Africa, and I was actually born in Ghana, too, and came to the United States when I was two years old. It's always football over there, soccer, but becoming a Massachusetts native, you can't help but get sucked into all the sports.

I tried to do Kwanzaa with my family and was like, 'This sucks. What am I doing this for?' For me, I felt like I was doing it because I was trying to live up to someone else's idea of what 'black' was.

It's a small world when you're from South Sudan.

My mum and dad were speaking all the time about, 'In Sudan we do this,' and 'In Egypt we do that,' so I was very aware of cultural differences. I was confused growing up; it gave me a feeling of being an outsider watching others. But I think this is good for a writer.

When people ask me where I'm from, I say I'm from the Sudan. But when they ask what my hometown is, I say London. It's where I lived, and it's where my whole family lived.

I know that, me being from Sudan and London, it's a big honour to have even made it to the NBA.

Sudan is not Arab enough for Arabs and not African enough for Africans.

I'm from South Sudan, that is where my heart will always be.