Quotes About Assimilation

I hear from non-Afghan immigrants - Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs in France - all the time. These people have had to redefine their lives, which is what my family went through when we came to the U.S. in 1980.

I was a redhead when I first came to America.

I was too prissy, too refined, too abstemious, too French to be a good American writer.

I'm just really good at blending in. If you look at how I've grown up, I wasn't the best, so hanging back comes more naturally.

I'm definitely an American, because I grew up here. But I've lived very happily in Britain.

I'm much more attracted to the miscegenation of cultures than to harmony.

When I first came to England I hated football and knew nothing about it. Watching 0-0s and 1-0s having come from Aussie Rules was just dull. The only player I had heard of was David Beckham. But when I was living in Leicester I started watching Match of the Day and really got into Chelsea.

It took me a year to really learn the American lingo. I really feel for people who are coming here and don't speak English at all. It must be hell.

There's so many Chinese or Asian Americans that were either born in another country like I was and raised in America or born in America and raised in America. They're normal Americans, and they just happen to have a different heritage.

When I first came to the States, I thought I had a perfect American accent, and then I was abruptly becoming aware that it wasn't. So I did have to work on it a little bit, but I was hesitant working on it because I thought it was good.

I still have that South Indian accent. But I am working on it. Hindi audiences should feel that I am speaking like them and should relate to me.

We are now the proud owners of a white boy. Now we have to shop in the caucasian isle and get sunscreen, mayonaise and mild salsa because the other ones really hawt!

By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

Vi?š bija aizmirsis, ka vairums ?aužu sveš? zem? j?tas labi tikai tad, ja var noniecin?t t?s iedz?vot?jus.

What I'm primarily saying,' he says, 'is that this is a time for knowledge assimilation, not backstabbing. We learned a lesson, you and I. We personally grew. Gratitude for this growth is an appropriate response. Gratitude, and being careful never to make the same mistake twice.

That day I learned a person can get used to anything. Soon it all seemed normal to us, and we even joked about it

Assimilation doesn't mean whitewashing one's ethnic background. It means adding to our own, and in so doing, enriching America's soul.

I really like a lot of different music, and it's taken a while to make them all work together as a unit.

I've never worked in my natural accent, having studied so hard to get rid of it when I moved to England as a child where I was bullied at school for 'talking funny.'

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.

One of the things I worked very hard on all my life was to be like everyone else. I tried very hard to fit in.

I'm definitely more Asian than a lot of people who have never been to Asia. But by blood and by race, they instantly say I deserve to be Asian. I've worked really hard to be Asian, and I think I'm Asian enough.

At the beginning of the 60's our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country. We kidded ourselves a while, we said: 'They won't stay, sometime they will be gone.' But this isn't reality.

We do have to watch to see how the foreign workers and immigrants are fitting in with our community, and you have to watch them mix so that you don't overbalance the numbers or the tone of our society.