Elliott Abrams Quotes

I have no nationality, no country.

When you move a border, suddenly life changes violently. I write about nationality.

When Bangladesh refused to renew my passport, I used U.N. travel documents. You can't disown your country.

I mean, Turkey is my country. You know, it's my flag. That is where we're raised... My family is born there. So that's why, like, it's tough to see that... your country don't want you.

I'm interested in people who find themselves in places, either of their choosing or not, and who are forced to decide how best to live there. That feeling of both citizenship and exile, of always being an expatriate - with all the attendant problems and complications and delight.

In England I am not English, in India I am not Indian. I am chained to the 1,000 square miles that is Trinidad; but I will evade that fate yet.

Most human experience has been that of statelessness.

I've identified all my life with refugees.

I have always found it jarring to encounter people born and raised in, say, Switzerland, who are denied its citizenship and still considered Algerians or Turks.

I don't feel I was "born American," but my homeland was denied to me after the end of World War II and I craved something I could identify with.

I'll always be a foreigner.

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.

Migration is the story of my life: my parents and grandparents journeyed across four continents to flee war and find jobs, eventually finding their way to the U.S.

All I ever want is to return to either Bangladesh, my motherland, or India, my adopted home.

It's a complicated issue, but I define myself as an American, primarily.

Doesn't the world see the suffering of millions of Palestinians who have been living in exile around the world or in refugee camps for the past 60 years? No state, no home, no identity, no right to work. Doesn't the world see this injustice?

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

A man who lives everywhere lives nowhere.

America took me into her bosom when there was no longer a country worthy of the name, but in my heart I am German - German in my soul.

I was born in India - but never really lived there.

I've done a lot of things away from my homeland.

We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.

I was born in the USA, which many people still find hard to believe.

During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba.

America feels like home as much as it does here. Although it's a strange situation as I feel almost like I'm in no-man's land some of the time, because although I'm a resident, I still can't vote so I don't really have a say in what goes on where I live.