Alex Tizon Quotes

Only when I came to America did I think of myself as British.

When I got to Florida, I was a British kid, but I was also an Indian kid: a brown kid with an English accent. Talk about being an outsider. And that's become the theme of a lot of the stuff I write about.

Maybe I am not French, maybe I am from nowhere.

II grew up in Australia, but I'm not from there originally. Like, my dad's South American, so I know what that's like to grow up in a culture that's not your own.

I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.

Most Americans have parents or grandparents who immigrated to this country, and we know the hardships they faced, from learning the language to dealing with prejudice.

I feel like my life experience is that of an outsider. Let me explain: my parents are from Panama, and they moved to the United States the year after I was born. They moved into an all-white neighborhood, where the previous black family had a cross burned on their lawn.

The difference between me and American-born actors is that I came here with the expectation of not being treated fairly.

I think of myself as an Indian comedian, but I've had British and American schooling. I always had this feeling of not fitting in anywhere, of observing situations from the outside.

I certainly know German colleagues in the U.S. who try to be Americans, try to melt into Americanism, even before they get married and become American citizens. But I've never tried that.

Over the course of my life, I have made many transitions - most of them taking me further away from my Somali roots and steadily toward the enlightened mentality of Western democracy.

Efforts to concentrate immigrants in social groups and to retard their Americanization should be steadily frowned down.

We are Martians who have come to earth to change everything—and we are afraid we will not be so well received. So we try to keep it a secret, try to appear as Americans…But that we could not do because of our accent. So we settled in a country nobody ever has heard about and now we are claiming to be Hungarians.

My accent does slip. When I arrived in England in 1978 at 18, I was shocked to find myself 'the American' at RADA. The English and the Americans have an intense relationship. They helped us out in the Second World War.

I'm French - it's less important. Meaning, I remain a Frenchman in America, but I adapt to American culture. I feel good there - but I'm still a foreigner.

American histories were the same; they had these mad ideas about how Parliament worked, or what people really meant when they said A, B, or C. All my life, I felt simultaneously deracinated and rooted in both places, and now it's my greatest strength: I'm culturally bilingual.

I have written about cultural dislocation, and I understand the corrosive effect of diminished expectations.

Being South Asian in the U.K. is like being Latino in the U.S., I would guess. It's a bit more hood. You see things; things happen. I was bouncing between worlds. You're acting from a very early age, when you have to code-switch like that. I'm a hybrid, a mongrel. I think many people live that life.

I always feel as though I'm not quite Canadian enough for everybody.

I remember when I first came to America, nobody had a clue what a black Englishman was. I was either South African or Australian to them.

When you are in America, at least for me, as an immigrant, I try to be as Americanized as I could. I just want to be an actor, I don't just want to be an Asian actor necessarily.

People don't know what it's like being the foreigner until they are one.

I have both Swedish and Iranian cultures ingrained in me, so that's always there. Plus my love of the U.S. began early on. But growing up in Sweden as one of the few people of color around was not easy by any means.

I have Asian friends - second generation - and I am the worst in terms of being in touch with my heritage.

My parents were first-generation immigrants. My mum wore a sari but at school and as a teenager and in my 20s I wanted to fit in.