Quotes About Assimilation

Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds.

In China, I realized that if you visit often enough and learn the language, you will be assimilated, but you'll still be kept at arm's length; you'll always be looked on as a foreigner.

The first 10 years of my life, I lived as 'Matangi.' When I came to England in '86, my first week of school was terrible because I would put my hand up to answer things, and no one would choose me because they couldn't say my name. My auntie came from Europe to visit us, and she was like, 'Just call yourself something else.'

I first visited the Philippines when I was 29. I thought I would feel at home there, but I felt more out of place than I did in the U.S. I discovered I was more American than Filipino. It was shattering because I never felt quite at home in the U.S., either.

When I was a kid, it was thought I would do something in the visual arts because I was always drawing, but when we emigrated to Australia from Holland when I was seven, I learnt the English language, and I fell in love with it.

If the United States is the melting pot of the world, you need entertainment - you need visuals that represent that.

I'm sure I went through a stage when I resented being Indian because in every other manner, in terms of cultural reference points and vocabulary and all the rest of it, I was way ahead of everybody else - so the one thing that set me back was being Indian. And I couldn't do anything about it.

The 'Voice Kids U.K.' songs were chosen for me, and I had to try and make them mine.

I have been 'absorbing' people - their voices, their mannerisms - all my life, to the point where I am a sort of Frankenstein of different people. My own speaking voice is, in fact, a mixture of how my two best mates speak, because they are cool, and I am not.

If you want to be anonymous, you can go to Soho or Camden, and it's not a problem. There are a lot of Spanish people. If you go to Piccadilly or Oxford Circus, you hear lots of Spanish voices, but I'm not recognised much.

I've been a loner all my life, so it didn't bother me that Hungarian was my first language and that I had to learn English. I had a pretty heavy accent in junior high school and would say things like 'wolume control' instead of 'volume control.'

Every player needs time to settle in and to get used to a new club, from knowing the league to the other players - everything.

When I moved to Schalke it took me a few months to settle.

You get used to playing with players and what you like and then you know what happens during games, and it's not easy to just settle in.

It's true that players can take time to settle at a new club. I remember people telling me it took Patrice Evra and Nemanja Vidic a while - players who became great players for United.

Other Brazilians who've gone to Europe haven't always settled so quickly. Neymar has.

I didn't choose to come to the United States, but being raised here has shaped exactly who I am today, and I can't imagine that being taken away from me.

Obviously, you look at a situation and you say, 'What do I need to do to fit in?' I looked at the Clippers and said, 'I really need to work on my dunk shots.'

It just takes me awhile to get comfortable in any situation.

I did not want people to know that I was a Muslim; I did not want people to know my name or that I did not have an American name. I did not want that. Because I knew if they knew that, they would cast me as the bad guy.

It's difficult to adapt to Barcelona.

You have to have something in your head to understand the Barcelona play. You have to adapt as quickly as possible.

I don't like to be different; I would like to be the same.

I thought everything would be different in America. It wasn't.