Being Asian Quotes & Sayings

People lament that there's no roles being written for South Asian or Muslim characters. But their parents don't want their children to go into the entertainment field. You don't get it both ways. — Aasif Mandvi

I think being an Asian woman has been more of an advantage than a disadvantage. It helps me stand out from the rest of the entertainers out there. Again, being from such an ethnically diverse place like New York, you get comfortable and confident with being different! — Nadia Ali

Maybe all teenagers feel like they don't fit in. I never felt like a cool kid. I remember being bullied for being Asian. — Ruth Ozeki

I was born and raised in Vancouver. I moved to Beijing in 2010 just before the Olympics. Being an Asian Canadian actor, the amount of opportunity at the time was slim to none. I made the decision to go to China, and it was one of the best decisions of my life. — Osric Chau

I just said let's get some poets on tv. And when they said that sounded unlikely, I made it worse. I said, no man, I want to put a bunch of black poets on stage, too. Some Latino poets who barely speak English and Asian poets who can't believe how discriminated against they are. It was luck nad being in the right place. I wasn't saying nothing somebody else wasn't saying but they wouldn't hear it from them. — Russell Simmons

I got comments about being too small, too short, there haven't been any Asian players and who am I to go out there and turn pro before my 16th birthday? And that's all good and fine. People want to have their comments and their opinions. Ultimately, you do what you believe in your heart. I think for me, things turned out OK. — Michael Chang

I don't have a problem with these Arizona laws. I have a problem with Chicano, Gay and Lesbian, Asian-American and African-American histories not being taught in American History courses. — M.G. Hardie

As a Chinese American legislator, I applaud the RNC's Growth and Opportunity Project. Engaging Asian American and Pacific Islander communities about Republican principles is a worthwhile effort. I thank Chairman Priebus and Co-Chairman Day for making this a priority. We need to ensure our message of growth and opportunity is being heard in all communities throughout this nation, and I am proud to be a part of this effort. — Kimberly Yee

And having those mystical elements you see in Asian cinema and certainly Asian martial arts cinema, it's something that we wanted to begin to introduce - the idea of spirituality and the idea of there being something else out in the world besides people who are great fighters. — Alfred Gough

Being Asian in this business is something you have to consider, because sometimes people aren't as open. They'll say, I can't see you with a Caucasian person. — Lucy Liu

I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. Between 1984 and 1995, 40 per cent of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate. — Pauline Hanson

Being the only Asian-American in the State Legislature, I've had no choice but to reach across the aisle. — Grace Meng

I tried on various uniforms of manhood in my teens and twenties. [...] I slipped in and out of these uniforms like someone in a fitting room at Macy's trying on suits, except I'd walk around in them for a few months or years. The only suits I avoided were Asian ones. I had already concluded that being Asian did not play in one's favour as a man, not in this land of giants. — Alex Tizon

Many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and are only one step away from being homeless. Whether you are white, black, Latino, or Asian, we have to be there to help pick each other up. — Raheem Devaughn

It's funny - when I started acting, I didn't know I was going to be talking about Asian-American issues so much. You know what, though? It just comes with the territory, being ethnic. — Justin Chon

Western communication has what linguists call a "transmitter orientation"
that is, it is considered the responsibility of the speaker to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously ... within a Western cultural context, which holds that if there is confusion, it is the fault of the speaker. But Korea, like many Asian countries, is receiver oriented. It is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said. — Malcolm Gladwell

In America, people think being South Asian is still kind of exotic. When you go outside New York and Chicago and L.A., there are people who have never tried Indian food ... they've never even tasted it! — Aasif Mandvi

China's productive system draws upon the other East Asian countries to a great extent. The volume of trade is much larger than the net amount being exported from China. China needs substantial reserves to finance all that. — Milton Friedman

People take pride in being Irish-American and Italian-American. They have a particular culture that infuses the whole culture and makes it richer and more interesting. I think if we can expand that attitude to embrace African-Americans and Latino-Americans and Asian-Americans, then we will be in a position where all our kids can feel comfortable with the worlds they are coming out of, knowing they are part of something larger. — Barack Obama

Being Asian where you're supposed to be more quiet and softer and I was always getting reprimanded for laughing to loud or speaking to loudly. — Kelly Hu

The one titled "Romance" included the following: "Would you like a drink?" "You're a fantastic dancer." "You look like some cousin of mine." The latter would work only if you were Asian, but even then it's a little creepy, the implication being "the cousin I have always wanted to undress and ejaculate on. — David Sedaris

Korean-American: Have you ever noticed how most Asian-Americans are slightly brain-damaged from having grown up with Asian parents? It's like being raised by monkeys - these retarded monkeys who can barely speak English and who are too evil to understand anything besides conformity and status. Most of us hate these monkeys from an early age and try to learn how to be human from school or television, but the result is always tainted by this subtle or not so subtle retardation. Asian people from Asia are even more brain-damaged, but in a different way, because they are the original monkey. — Jean Lee

At that moment, it just seemed as if his face was perfect. Innocent and strong. And - why not? - exotic, too, bu exotic in the sense of being distinct from most of the other faces we saw every day. A face I would design if I could design a face for the son I was never going to have. It was an Asian face. Not unlike the one I used to see in the mirror so many decades ago, the one I was so ashamed of for its distinctive contours. The one I spent years trying to alter with clothespins and duct tape. — Alex Tizon

We need a broader party. If we're not doing better with millennials and women and Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans and others, we will have a tough time being a majority party at the national level. — Rob Portman

Bemoan being lower-middle-class and colored in a police state that protects only rich white people and movie stars of all races, though I can't think of any Asian-American ones. — Paul Beatty

She believed being so free with her sexuality was empowering, but I wouldn't say taking home a douchebag who would laugh about the encounter with his friend later is a step forward in the feminist movement.-Lily — Teresa Lo

Being black, Latino, or Asian is not a genre. Romantic comedies, thrillers, action - those are genres. I think there's a lot of people who want to have the conversation. I don't think people are afraid of it, I just think it's the time to have that conversation. Race is not a genre. — Mara Brock Akil

Coming out of college into the draft, being Asian-American and being from Harvard, that's not going to be an advantage because of stereotypes. — Jeremy Lin

Muslims pursued knowledge to the edges of the earth. Al-Biruni, the central Asian polymath, is arguably the world's first anthropologist. The great linguists of Iraq and Persia laid the foundations a thousand years ago for subjects only now coming to the forefront in language studies. Ibn Khaldun, who is considered the first true scientific historian, argued hundreds of years ago that history should be based upon facts and not myths or superstitions. The great psychologists of Islam known as the Sufis wrote treatise after treatise that rival the most advanced texts today on human psychology. The great ethicists and exegetes of Islam's past left tomes that fill countless shelves in the great libraries of the world, and many more of their texts remain in manuscript form.
In the foreword of "Being Muslim. A Practical Guide" by Dr. Asad Tarsin. — Hamza Yusuf

Focusing on being a person instead of an Asian or an [anything] seems to promote a worldview that encourages people to treat others based on what each person has specifically done in their life, which seems like it would reduce such things as war, racism, unfairness, "hate crimes," [other things most people feel aversion toward]. — Tao Lin

You can't be invisible being Asian. You can't say "Hi, I'm white!" — Arthur Dong

At least ten times as many people died from preventable, poverty-related diseases on September 11, 2011, as died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that black day. The terrorist attacks led to trillions of dollars being spent on the 'war on terrorism' and on security measures that have inconvenienced every air traveller since then. The deaths caused by poverty were ignored. So whereas very few people have died from terrorism since September 11, 2001, approximately 30,000 people died from poverty-related causes on September 12, 2001, and on every day between then and now, and will die tomorrow. Even when we consider larger events like the Asian tsunami of 2004, which killed approximately 230,000 people, or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti that killed up to 200,000, we are still talking about numbers that represent just one week's toll for preventable, poverty-related deaths - and that happens fifty-two weeks in every year. — Peter Singer

I'm not sure if being Chinese really helped, but I do think that if a non-Asian had written a book called 'Crazy Rich Asians,' they might not have been looked upon so kindly. — Kevin Kwan

For years, I looked to Bruce Lee as a mentor as being a Chinese and Asian man living in this country. — Donnie Yen

Membership of a larger group is not an identity. Being Asian is not an identity. Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically deprived. — Lionel Shriver

Think of being curled up and floating in a darkness. Even if you could think, even if you had an imagination, would you ever imagine its opposite, this miraculous world the Asian Taoists call the "Ten Thousand Things"? And if the darkness just got darker? And then you were dead? What would you care? How would you eve know the difference? — Denis Johnson

People like to say that East Asians in general, and Japanese in particular, are not very expressive: there's that term 'inscrutable.' But often, Europeans just don't get the Asian codes. Believe me, the message is being expressed OK. — David Mitchell

Contrary to English which has two liquid phonemes, Asian languages have one liquid consonant which causes Asian speakers to have difficulty in hearing and producing /L/ and /R/ accurately. When we examine the pictographic script we observe that the sickle tool is represented by a staff-shaped pictograph signaling the letter 'L' and the head is represented by a head-shaped pictograph signaling the letter 'R'; it is as if the Asiatic culture got historically traumatized based on the cultural confrontation between the Aryan and Semitic traditions. If we look at Early Aramaic alphabet we observe that the 'R' looks like a serpent's head and 'L' looks like the sickle. If originally the script got developed from hieroglyphs, then it ought to operate in that same manner rather than being phonetically produced for example by the sound of cutting wheat for the letter 'R' as my friend Randy Simons suggested. — Ibrahim Ibrahim

Try being an indie author, a minority author, a woman, and a person with health issues in the world of traditional - that's where you are clearly 'different' and marginalized. I am all of that, yet I am still here and smiling. Life is good! — Kailin Gow

I saw an opportunity to use a restaurant to identify a lot of my issues and concerns with being an immigrant in America, and Asian in America, and a young person in America. — Eddie Huang

I try to take people at face value and then beyond, taking them out of face value and out of the category of being Black, Latino, Asian, White, Jewish, Muslim or Christian or Atheist, none of that matters to me. — Immortal Technique

When I speak about love and compassion, I do so not as a Buddhist, nor as a Tibetan, nor as the Dalai Lama. I do so as one human being speaking with another. I hope that you at this moment will think of yourself as a human being rather than as an American, Asian, European, African, or member of any particular country. These loyalties are secondary. If you and I find common ground as human beings, we will communicate on a basic level. — Dalai Lama XIV

I think the only way one can really determine whether extremism in the defense of liberty is justified, is not to approach it as an american or a european or an African or an Asian, but as a human being. If we look upon it as different types immediately we begin to think in terms of extremism being good for one and bad for another, or bad for one and good for another. But if we look upon it, if we look upon ourselves as human beings, I doubt that anyone will deny that extremism, in defense of liberty, the liberty of any human being. — Malcolm X

To be honest, at that point, just being so fresh to L.A., I was in the mind-set of just getting work, at all costs. But, if you take a step back from it, it's just such a blessing to be able to play somebody like Glenn. Me being Asian American, it's nice to have something to play that's not so very stereotypical. It's also nice to have somebody that I identify with. — Steven Yeun

Let me tell you about customs, James," said Lillian. "I am not accustomed to being summoned to someone else's home. You're very fortunate that I came."
"I am indeed blessed," Dad told her. "I am also, by the way, called Jon."
Lillian looked faintly surprised. "Are you?"
"Really?" Dad asked. "Really? I was the only Asian guy who went to our school. I kind of stood out. While you are an identical twin, and I still managed to know your name. — Sarah Rees Brennan

When I say that asian women are beautiful it's not a sexual thing. I'm not being degrading, I find them sexually repulsive. — Doug Stanhope

I know about lots of things that have nothing to do with being Asian, that you would never guess from looking at me. I know all about musical theater. I could go on 'Jeopardy!' and knock off the whole Broadway show tunes category. Also the whole Bible stories category. — B. D. Wong

As Asian-Americans, the charge that is often lobbed against us is sort of the least original: the idea that somehow we're perpetual foreigners, that we can't be trusted, and that even my father, who was patriotic to the point that it was kind of a joke among his children, would be accused of being disloyal to America. — David Henry Hwang

I remember watching Swan Lake and everybody looking exactly the same, but being able to relate because they were the only company I had ever seen even on video that had Asian dancers. The Asian community in Hawaii is actually almost as dominant as the Caucasian community. I thought "I can relate to that company because they look like people that I see every day." They weren't all little stick-thin Russian ballerinas. — Joan Chen

In the nights though, I couldn't help but weave the golden cloth of my dreams. Each stitch from heart to thought, and thought to heart, was painful to bear, even if it was joyous at times. Because each thread was fraught with the fears of being broken midway, lost and never found again.
Nida — Faiqa Mansab

But, yeah, as far as Asian Americans go, I hope they know they can look at me and see that they can do music on their own, within a band or just on their own, and not feel like there's any barriers. I've never felt any particular barriers myself, being who I am. — James Iha

I missed the anonymity-the ability to run to the market without running into my third-grade teacher.
I missed the nightlife-the knowledge that if I wanted to, there was always an occasion to get dressed up and head out for dinner and drinks.
I missed the restaurants-the Asian, the Thai, the Italian the Indian. I was already tired of mashed potatoes and canned green beans.
I missed the culture- the security that comes from being on the touring schedule of the major Broadway musicals.
I missed the shopping-the funky boutiques, the eclectic shops, the browsing.
I missed the city. — Ree Drummond

I remain fundamentally optimistic about
Wall Street as a marketplace and as a vehicle for wealth creation. Its
future will rightly depend on several variables, chief among them
being human choices; whether they be rationally, emotionally, subjectively
or objectively made. Financial engineering taught us that if
it could be quantified, it could be qualified. We learned about how
to use leverage and have abused that knowledge for a myriad of
reasons. We became practitioners of the transaction-based model, but forgot that long before the abacus there was trust and integrity,
anchors of relationship-based models common with Middle East and
Asian markets. It goes back to a handshake, the first and enduring
example of mutual consensus. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

I hope that at this moment you are thinking of yourself as a human being rather than as an American, Asian, European, African, or member of any particular country. These loyalties are secondary. — Dalai Lama

Being successful means good results for the national team at first in the regional competitions like the Asian Cup and keeping in mind to go for Gold at a World Cup in the future. — Berti Vogts

My voice comes from faraway, therefore it is faint and, also, because it is a woman's voice, it is trembling of the emotion imposed by your presence, as much as of the honour of being listen to. My voice comes from faraway, but it hopes when you will listen to it that it will resound in your hearts.
My voice comes from the midst of this nation, which having been placed on the threshold of Europe, will have loved and admired France and like France, and often through it, she would have strived for Freedom, vowed to have accomplished a splendid destiny and face bravely the changing mood of Fortune.

You may well recognise in these qualities Romania, land of suffering, land of enlightenment and of valour placed across the promontory against the dredge of Asian invasions and like a beacon being mightily conscious of defending the civilization, which gave it its people and its laws. - Paris, 27th April 1925; addressing the League of Nations (translated Constantin Roman — Elena Vacarescu

The Singapore Open is the flagship event of the Asian Tour, it is a massive event and it is being played in a great place. I love coming here and it is good to be back. — Lee Westwood

You don't get respect for being an Asian-American basketball player in the U.S. — Jeremy Lin

Bruce Lee was the first guy to bring film recognition of Asian men not being wimps, so it made me want to be as powerful as he was. — Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa