Michael Emerson Quotes

As an immigrant, I learned by watching other people.

I've gotten used to being a foreigner.

We are taking our culture and suturing it to America. Like gum on the bottom of a shoe, we are not going to disappear. Unlike other peoples who totally assimilated, we are more interested in co-assimilation.

In addition to the research, I enjoyed learning French and assimilating the culture of another country.

Rather than be asked to abandon one's own heritage and to adapt to the mores of the new country, one was expected to possess a treasure of foreign skills and customs that would enrich the resources of American living.

I was going to be living there and I didn't want to sound like a foreigner all my life.

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.

Whatever country you go to, you need to definitely follow the rules. So I believe it's very important for people, wherever they go, any immigrant should know or should try to learn something about the culture.

Immigrants to the United States usually arrive with a willingness to fit into their new country and reshape their identities accordingly.

Countries like France, Italy and the Netherlands may pay lip service to inclusion, but the ethos in those places is that immigrants can never really become French, Italian or Dutch, no matter what their passports say. The emphasis is on tolerance and respect, but there’s no real expectation that foreign nationals fit in.

I know that if I have come to Britain, I must adapt, and I will try to.

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

Being in a new country, you learn a lot about yourself.

I think when you move to a country like the U.S., you need to understand the culture, to understand how people see the game, and adapt yourself.

I have sort of made it my mission to be treated less as a foreigner, less as a guest.

It's hard enough being American and trying to make it in an American world, but being Australian, you're from a whole different country and have a whole different way of doing things.

I'm excited to share my experience as an immigrant assimilating to a new country and an outsider stumbling my way into Hollywood.

I think being an immigrant makes me overly optimistic.

In Russia, as I sat there day after day wearing headphones, listening to the interpreter struggle to make our words relevant, I wondered if we could establish meaningful rapport with a nation that had never seen raisins dance in dark glasses on TV...never had a garage sale.

I was interested in immigration and I wanted to use that in the film, not necessarily to talk about immigrants, although I wanted to do that, but to talk about ourselves through the eyes of an immigrant. The film takes place in the school and it tells us a little bit about who we are and where we're at, but through the eyes of someone who has a different background.

I think one can live in American society with a certain cultural heritage, whether it's an African heritage or other, European,what have you, and still absorb a great deal of this culture. There is always cultural assimilation.

I've been in America for almost ten years. I've had many parts of the American experience. I've been all over this country and seen many different parts of it. It's just that I'm not an American. I've never become an American. I'm talking about the whole thing-psychologically, citizenship, the whole trip. Of course I've definitely been influenced by America-I'm definitely influenced by the music and the culture.

The important thing about travel in foreign lands is that it breaks the speech habits and makes you blab less, and breaks the habitual space-feeling because of different village plans and different landscapes. It is less important that there are different mores, for you counteract these with your own reaction-formations.

I think people look at me and realize that I am definitely not in line to the throne. It feels very easy living in Great Britain. The world is a much smaller place than it used to be, it doesn't feel like a huge cultural difference living here.

I would not describe myself as a political writer except in the sense that the personal is political, which is something that I do strongly believe. And in that sense American Gods is a very personal novel and a political novel. I was trying to describe the experience of coming to America as an immigrant, the experience of watching the way that America tends to eat other cultures.