A Quote by James Lasdun

America as a setting seems inexhaustibly fascinating to me, and I think there's something about the outsider viewpoint that works for me. Being of Jewish descent in England always carried a vague sense of being foreign, while not being a practicing Jew made it hard to think of myself as fully Jewish either. So living here in a way just clarifies that terminal outsider position - makes it somehow official, which I like.

James Lasdun

Quote Topics

About Always America Being Carried Descent Either England Fascinating Foreign Fully Hard Jew Jewish Just Like Living Made Made It Makes Me Myself Official Outsider Position Practicing Seems Sense Setting Somehow Something Terminal Think Vague Viewpoint Way Which While Works

Quote Author

James Lasdun
British - Novelist
Born: 1958

In school they told me I was a Jew, "a filthy Jew." At first I asked myself what exactly that was. But then I began to understand. I was a Jew, I was a member of the Jewish faith, the Jewish community. One time, when I was giving a reading at a school, someone asked me: "If it was so dangerous to be Jewish, why didn't you convert to Christianity?" My response was: "It's not as easy you think. When you're a Jew, you're a Jew.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

I like being Jewish and I married a Jewish girl. It's like a way of life and it's good to be able to instil some of that sense of being in your kids. All of that makes me seem as though I am quite observant but actually the flipside of this is I don't know if there is a God or not.

Grant Shapps

I think being an outsider in general always helps you in comedy. I think it helps to have an outsider's eye. And so I have an outsider's voice. You know, as soon as I start talking, I don't belong here. And I think that helps in a way.

John Oliver

The feeling of being an outsider was a big part of my childhood. I think that helps comedians. That feeling of being an outsider. That desire for a perspective that's all your own. The idea for me to make stuff myself with my own meaning came from that as well.

Kurt Braunohler

...I am an outsider, a lesbian, a shikse. The Jewish community is not my community. But as a Jew--as a Jew in a Christian, anti-Semitic society--the Jewish community is, and will always remain, my community. Enemy and ally.

Irena Klepfisz

I love being Jewish, but I think that our generation is the first generation that crossed that line between being a cultural versus a practicing Jew.

Bryan Fogel

I just think of myself as a comedian, really. I mean, I talk about being Jewish a lot. It's funny because I do think of myself as Jewish ethnically, but I'm not religious at all. I have no religion.

Sarah Silverman

I don't know what it's like to be Jewish, but I suspect there is some aspect of that: being Jewish is the thing that bonds you as opposed to being Jewish from Poland, or Jewish from Hungary.

Ayad Akhtar

The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity.

Aldous Huxley

I never felt like a good Jew. My mother was not Jewish, and that makes me a non-Jew according to Jewish religious law.

Stephane Hessel

I think that Judaism has been, throughout its history since A.D. 70, a diaspora culture that's all about being a minority. In fact, being a small minority. When I'm in Israel, I cannot get used to the notion that we're all Jewish. It doesn't seem to me that we're supposed to all be Jewish.

Mark Kurlansky

I don't think being the only child of a single parent helped. I was always a little unsteady in my self-belief. Then there was the Jewish thing. I love being Jewish, I have no problem with it at all. But it did become like a scar, with all these people saying you don't look it.

Lauren Bacall

I mean, I talk about being Jewish a lot. It's funny because I do think of myself as Jewish ethnically, but I'm not religious at all. I have no religion.

Sarah Silverman

I understand if everyone looking at me is seeing a Jew and seeing me as a kind of 'other.' But I can't be expected to see myself that way. That is, to me, Jewish is the normal way to be; it's not a type of being.

Nathan Englander

I don't really know of the Jewish tradition of comedy, only the Jewish tradition of not keeping your mouth shut. Complaining about all that is hard, unfair or ridiculous in life-having strong feelings, and not being able to suppress them. That, to me, is Jewish.

Fred Melamed

I think there's no question that everything possible is being done to stop Donald Trump and you're seeing a case study in how hard it is to be outsider and the double standard of the national media, particularly if you're a conservative outsider.

Newt Gingrich

A Quote by James Lasdun

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors