Richard Rodriguez Quotes

My interest in writing about American history stemmed originally, I think, from a subconscious desire to find roots - I felt like a girl without a country. I have put down roots quite firmly by now, but in the process, I have discovered the joys of research and am probably hooked.

In a sense I've made the same film over and over again. In all of them I've asked, 'Who are we as Americans?

Dad's Jewish and Irish, Mom's German and Scotch. I couldn't say I was anything. My last name isn't even Downey. My dad changed his name when he wanted to get into the Army and was underage. My real name is Robert Elias. I feel like I'm still looking for a home in some way.

When I was finishing 'Now You See Me 2,' I remember thinking about exploring the Asian-American identity side of my brain.

I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?

My father had barely any education. He could hardly write or count. But his great pride was that he was perfectly bilingual. In the household, he entertained this idea that we had to speak both languages.

I'm from New Orleans, and I have a French last name - although I have no real relationship with my last name because it's not my name. I don't know my name.

It wasn't a conscious decision to search for my Asian self; it was an urgency born out of an emptiness I was trying to fill.

Algeria is what allowed me to accept myself.

Weirdly, when I was in drama school my accent probably got stronger because of that sense of identity when you leave home and go to somewhere where there are loads of people from different places. Holding on to being Welsh and where I was from was a real crutch for me.

The stories I always see about a first-generation kid trying to erase where they came from, or trying to just be white, I would watch those shows or movies and I was like, 'I don't get this.' This isn't how I feel.

Kunta Kinte's strength derives from the knowledge of where he comes from, but it struck me that I don't know where I come from. I understand that my last name is Kirby, that I was born in London, third-generation Jamaican, and at some point along the line, that name was changed. I didn't know my history past my grandparents.

I could always talk about being a Latino and having a Mexican mom and a Honduran dad and being from Honduras. That was always an easy go-to place. But on the other hand, it was a crutch.

I think nowadays it's very important to re-connect with ourselves and our roots.

I think any break-up from a long relationship has this accompanying feeling of who am I without this person. You feel like a half-person because you've integrated yourself into an idea of a couple for so long, and then teasing that out and finding out who you are without them, it just takes a while. It feels like an amputation.

I was born in Iran, left at a very young age-less than a year old-and grew up and was educated in the West. I grew up thinking of myself as an American but also, because of my parents and the Iranian culture that was in our home, as an Iranian. So if there's any such thing as dual loyalty, then I have it-at least culturally.

Language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas they cannot retain an identity of language.

Back home I had always been comfortable around people. I was the troublemaker, always being funny - that's just who I am. I'm Latina; I've always had that extra little flavor. But when I got to New York, it became about being comfortable with myself in a place where I didn't know many people, and that was the big challenge. Ultimately my personality helped me build relationships with the people I was working with, and I was able to stand out.

Every people, in order to remain healthy and strong, has to have a grasp of its foundation story. Culture is a chrysalis - it is protective, it takes care of you. That's what cultures are for. You cannot rob a people of language, culture, mother, father, the value of their labor - all of that - without doing vast damage to those people.

If we come from good families where we have been supported well, there is a disillusionment we have to undergo in terms of the culture's values. We have to get beyond our cultural mythology to find out who we are.

I miss being in my home country; here, I'm always a foreigner. America is, of course, built of people who are not from here. But going home, even just landing at Arlanda, the Stockholm airport, I think, "This is where I'm from. These people are my people."

Since I was five, I've known that I was adopted, which is a politically correct term for being clueless about one's own origins.

Growing up in America, I never really appreciated my culture. I knew what being Hispanic was, but I thought that since I didn't look Hispanic, I was white.

Oddly enough, my mother was born in Southampton. I have roots in Southampton, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor. My grandfather, her father, Stefano Rullo, when he came from Naples, he went to Pennsylvania and worked coal mines.

India is still flinching from a cultural insult, still looking for its identity.