I'm a very fertile Puerto Rican.

I'm from California, but my father, who passed away when I was young, was from Newark. When I was a kid, we would go back east and catch Yankees games. His side of the family are big Yankees fans....

I was born in Mumbai and brought up between Mumbai and Nashik.

I'm a typical Delhi girl. Professional parents, nuclear family. My father was in the navy. I've spent my whole life in government accommodation, and it's been lovely.

Music was always heavily involved with my spirit. My entire family is Jamaican. It's nothing but reggae music and those kinds of vibes.

I was born in Eastern Europe, in Latvia, and I'm fluent in Russian.

You can pass on my respects to the grand mufti, but I will not cover myself up.

I didn't have a bar mitzvah, my family aren't practising Jews.

My culture comes from everywhere. I'm sick of this notion of nationality, that if you're brought up in the same city or same country you're the same. Even three kids brought up in the same family with...

The African-American tradition, in the main, is very, very church-based, very, very Christian. It accepts, you know, certain narratives about the world. I didn't really have that present in my house.

What you hear is southern Michigan, not a drawl, but a halting kind of speech where you leave spaces when there shouldn't be any. We take a breath anywhere.

For me, India symbolises a big fire and a big river.

My greatest hope is that we will see a day when Israel will stand tall as a symbol of belonging across the Jewish world, and when global citizens will look to Jerusalem as the vibrant, modern,...

I remember, in my first show in New York, they asked, 'Where is the Indian-ness in your work?'... Now, the same people, after having watched the body of my work, say, 'There is too much Indian...

I am lucky to be a film director. I can create, express. It proves that I am still alive and the Khmer Rouge did not succeed in destroying me.

Music is a frequency, and my frequency, when I put it out there, is on the love vibes. It's not always sappy. Like, 'Bulletproof' is a love song. It's a black love song. I made it for my people. I...

I guess I'm the last of the Cockneys.

I knew nothing of American History because I didn't pay attention to American History in school. Because I did not see myself in American History in school.

I married an American. He was from the Pacific Northwest but went to law school in the South, so I was living in Virginia and North Carolina.

It is good to make my comeback in Jamaica after not playing for so long.

I had a huge Indian wedding, and I did it for my wife, and I did it for my white friends.

you might be a redneck

In Russia I went to a great yeshiva, and in America I work in a carnival.

She might be the best-dressed little girl in her elementary school class, but she was still a Greek. Her parents spoke a foreign language, their food was different, and she looked different from the...

I never knew what language they'd lapse into when fucked – Urdu or Telugu or a mix of both {only the techies came in English}.

The literature of America should reflect the children of America.

Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.

Ifemelu told her about the vertigo she had felt the first time she went to the supermarket; in the cereal aisle, she had wanted to get cornflakes, which she was used to eating back home, but suddenly...

The working class do things differently. I can hear it. I can see we are not wrong. We are not just poor people who have not yet evolved into something else - i.e., people with money. We are something...

but the first rule about a black woman's hair is you don't talk about a black woman's hair. And the second rule is you don't ever touch a black woman's hair without getting written permission first....