Quotes About Identity

People wanted to be friends with me for not the right reasons. They'd introduce me to somebody else as the Olympian or the swimmer. I didn't want to stand out. I wanted to blend in.

I was a better basketball player growing up in high school than I was a swimmer. Basketball to this day is my favorite sport.

People were actually approaching me on the street and thinking that I was an athlete. They couldn't quite place it, but a runner, or swimmer or something.

People come up to me and say, 'You're that swimmer.'

I'm an actor, not a star. Stars are people who live in Hollywood and have heart-shaped swimming pools.

I love swimming, but swimming can't be my entire identity, my entire world.

Look, we have existed for 4,000 years - 2,000 years in diaspora, in exile. Nobody in the Middle East speaks their original language but Israel. When we started 64 years ago, we were 650,000 people. So, you know, we are maybe swimming a little bit against the stream, but we continue to swim.

I don't think I'm 'the guy' in the sport of swimming, but people want to label me as 'the guy.'

I went swimming the other day and my wife was watching and she said, 'You know, it's funny, it's when you've got no clothes on, no one recognizes you.' I said, 'What are you saying? That I should do more love scenes?'

Basically, I get paid to be crazy. I get paid to believe I'm someone else, live in a completely false reality, and believe it's real. And that's a little scary. And I do it to the best of my ability. But it's kind of like swimming out to sea. You have to leave enough energy to swim back, and sometimes you get scared you swam too far.

I read Leisel Jones' book. She said she retired at 27 and said, 'Now what?' because swimming was the biggest part of her life. So for me, that's why I'm keeping up my studies on the side even if it's going to take a bit longer than normal, but at least I'll have it.

In Libya, I did well at school because I was clever. In Egyptian public school, I got the highest marks for the basest of reasons. And in the American school, I struggled. Everything - mathematics, the sciences, pottery, swimming - had to be conducted in a language I hardly knew and that was neither spoken in the streets nor at home.

Swimming is still very much a part of me.

'Swimming Pool' was a very important moment for me because the character was written for me.

When I was in the U.S. for 'Swimming Pool,' people had asked me, 'So are you going to settle down in Hollywood?' And I said, 'No, I'm French! I am living in France. I am not going to be American.'

I'm not getting recognized because I posed in a swimsuit edition of some magazine, but because of what I do on the field, and that's important to me.

Being pregnant finally helped me understand what my true relationship was with my body - meaning that it wasn't put on this earth to look good in a swimsuit.

I'm a big believer in everybody being themselves. If not doing a swimsuit calendar is yourself, that's great. But if doing a swimsuit calendar is yourself, then you should be able to do it. What I do outside the car adds to who I am and expresses a different side of me.

Men and girls, men and girls: Artificial swine and pearls.

There had never really been a female that was breaking down a swing. So when I'd walk into a clubhouse, I'd have to explain a little bit of who I was.

I think a good book is one you can lose yourself in and find yourself in, and that's what I did with 'Swing Time.'

I did 'Kidulthood' and 'Adulthood,' and that's what people wanted and expect me to always do. They want me to do 'hood films and be the guy swinging baseball bats and saying 'Yo Blood' and beating up others in the street.

What people don't realize is that Tinder built a brand on more than the experience of the swipe.

According to my parents, I was supposed to have been a nice, churchgoing Swiss housewife. Instead I ended up an opinionated psychiatrist, author and lecturer in the American Southwest, who communicates with spirits from a world that I believe is far more loving and glorious than our own.