Asian Quotes - page 11
I don't think anyone understands the Asian Americans' place amidst this white and black culture. There's something very specific to being Asian American that other peoples aren't getting, and we haven't learned how to define it, even amongst ourselves. We're the Other. We're always the Other, we can be here forever and we're still foreign. We've impacted the culture, but third, fourth, fifth, sixth generations and still, you walk down the street and someone will look at you, and you will be foreign. That is what disturbs me.
Philip Kan Gotanda
My theater work came out of my community activism, and became an extension of that activism. Being Asian American, there are so many hurdles to get across in terms of creating awareness and recognition of Asian-American theater, wherever you go. Those two are, for me, wedded together completely...
Rick Shiomi
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer ... It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.
We are, and always will be, the United States of America.
It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.
Barack Obama
(I) imagined the princess, too scared to use the phone at the palace because she knew it was bugged. So she decides to go out, still wearing her best princess dress, and with her make-up smudged because she'd put it on in a hurry. And I thought she'd have gone to the shops and used a public phone. There's a whole string of Asian newsagents at that particular place. It's all very vivid... ‘Hi Paul, can you come over.
Stella Vine
Bangladesh is a majority Muslim country, with a significant, if shrinking Hindu minority-about 25-30% at the time of Partition in 1947, and less than 9% in 2003. The textbooks in Bangladesh are not based on an anti-Indian bias as are state sponsored textbooks in Pakistan. The social studies curriculum in Pakistan is premised on creating a national identity that is distinct from India, whereas Bangladeshi textbooks reflect a more pan-South Asian perspective, though Bengal-centric.
Yvette Rosser
The mismatch problem occurs as the workers required by companies for their vacancies are difficult to fill up due to shortage of talents in the labor pool. An Asian Development Bank study said labor mismatch is one of the culprits behind the country's slow economic growth and that the mismatch may be caused by too many highly educated people chasing too few jobs in the country.
Francis Escudero
I don't have [sic] problem with it. It depends on how you do it. People say, "Why do you have to play Connie Chung?” I also play John McCain, which is fucked up because Asians captured him. Why does a black guy have to play Bill Cosby? I've done characters with thick accents and ones without. When me and Ken [Jeong] did Pineapple Express they wanted accents. I wasn't going to say no-we were [playing] Asian assassins. In Harold And Kumar, I didn't need one; it didn't call for it. I'm a team player.
Bobby Lee
Yet more and more of the youth of America are instinctively horrified at the way President Johnson avoided all constitutional procedures and slyly maneuvered us into an Asian war. There was no national debate over a declaration of war. The lies and half-truths that were told, and the phony excuses gradually advanced, made most Americans dubious of the integrity of our leadership.
William O. Douglas
Having been through hot and cold wars, hardship and tribulations, people in Asia deeply cherish the value of peace and understand that development gains do not come easily. Over the past decades, Asia has enjoyed overall stability and sustained rapid growth, making possible the Asian Miracle. When Asia fares well, the whole world benefits. Therefore, we need to continue developing and strengthening Asia, demonstrate Asia's resilience, wisdom and strength and make Asia an anchor for world peace, a powerhouse for global growth and a new pacesetter for international cooperation.
Xi Jinping
If IE is the basis of European identity, one can understand that a European Urheimat for IE would be preferred over an Asian one. Consequently, some of the Nouvelle Droite authors are very attached to the idea of the Aryan Invasion as a necessary implication of the presumed European character and origin of the IE family. .... As a corollary to their Eurocentric view of IE history, Nouvelle Droite authors tend to accept the AIT and, along with it, the view of the caste system as an apartheid system between IE immigrants and Indian natives.... This is the way to remain stuck in Eurocentric theories of bygone days, which is more or less the story of the whole pro-AIT argument.
Koenraad Elst
When I lost my mother, I thought, there's no point. Everything I have done, I'd done for her. I went to school for her. She gave me no pressure. You know, and it's important for me to say this because, you know, there's a stereotype of the Asian tiger mom. My mother was never such a mother. She said, whatever you want to do, as long as you're happy, you can do it. And worse comes to worst, she points to the desk. She works in a nail salon. She points to the desk beside her. There's always an empty desk in the salon. She says, you can sit down right here, and then we'll work together. So I had ultimate freedom to explore. And I think for me, you know, that freedom really was all to serve her. It was, how do I help my mother get out of the projects? Every immigrant has that dream.
Ocean Vuong
To see them from above: the roving herds of beasts, the rivers carving stone, the rituals of man in all their varied panoply, to see the clouds roil over the patchwork latifundia of Asian plains, to see the mines of our home, is to remember the patterns of the world, and the majesty and complication and impermeable obscurity of distant lands. It is to remember how few people you know. How many do not know you. How many will soon forget you. How many praise you today to offer contempt tomorrow. Permanence of fame, power, dominion of the individual, are illusions. All that will be measured, all that will last, is your mastery of yourself.
Pierce Brown
I write personal stories about relationships, and living in this world and being a human being...but I happen to live in a world which views me as an Asian American. So my experiences are tainted by that, even if I'm not conscious of it. Someone said ‘the personal is political', where it seems like me just being honest about my experiences as a human being and as a person translates as being political about being an Asian American person. I'm not in this to be political or a social activist, it just happens that my being honest is a very political thing.
Mitski
Paul Keating ‘liked to say', Professor Huntington asserts confidently, that I was going to change Australia from being ‘"the odd man out to the odd man in” in Asia'. Despite Professor Huntington's authoritative quotation marks, I liked to say no such thing, and I never did. What I did say, and many times, was that Australia was not Asian or European or American or anything except Australian. This is what history and geography have delivered us. It is the only option we have and one which we have every reason to celebrate.
Paul Keating
Because I wasn't Asian enough- they decided to hire an Asian Consultant. Because I was fucking it up as an Asian. She would follow me around: "Margaret! Use chopsticks! And when you're done eating, you can put them in your hair. Now you're wearing shoes, which is something we don't do in the house. Now I'm just going to leave this abacus right here..."
Margaret Cho
Campaigning at a school in Enfield in 2001, Tony Blair was caught unawares by a feisty British Asian sixth-former. Suddenly this apparition arose before him, demolishing Blair's points as speedily as he tried to make them. This time around the New Labour machine haven't wanted to risk any of that. The Emperor has been ferried from Potemkin village to Potemkin hospital, and before he arrives a rigged rent-a-crowd of "ordinary people" are brought in to wave little flags. Journalists have been "embedded" - undoubtedly the cadres were hoping that these trusties would begin to sympathise with the man upon whom their jobs depended [and] they'd cease to notice how much of what he said was utter shit.
Will Self
