A Quote by Simon Tam

I started asking friends, my white friends around, I said, "What's something that you think all Asians have in common?" They almost always immediately said, "Slanted eyes." I thought that's really interesting. No. 1, it simply isn't true. Not all Asian Americans have slanted eyes, and of course, Asians aren't the only ethnic identities to have them. No. 2, we could talk about our slant on life and what it's like to be people of color, while at the same time, using this outdated and obscure racial slur, and turning it on its head.

Simon Tam

Quote Topics

About Almost Always Around Asian Asian American Asians Asking Color Common Could Course Ethnic Eyes Friends Head Identities Immediately Interesting Life Like Obscure Only Our Outdated People Really Really Interesting Said Same Same Time Simply Slant Something Started Talk Them Think Thought Time True Turning Using While White

Quote Author

Simon Tam
American - Musician
Born: March 30, 1981

As a community, we're fighting for Asians to play Asian roles. And then there's the other battle, which is Asian Americans playing roles that aren't written for Asians, and I think that's something that completely should happen; Why can't an Asian American male just play a leading cop figure... or the Matt Damon roles?

Ross Butler

You always fed strays and bent down to talk to the dogs you met on the street, looking straight into their eyes as if they were old friends. (Maybe they are, you said. From another life.) You liked to go to the pound and look at them. You tried to send them messages of comfort. I couldn’t go because I started crying the one time I tried. All those eyes and the barks like sobs.

Francesca Lia Block

Asian players train so hard. Most of the time, on Monday mornings, the only people you see on the range are Asians. I mean, only see Asians.

Yani Tseng

I believe that we are still hovering around the realm of Asians playing all types of Asians. I do not see that changing any time soon just because there is a limited pool of Asian actors.

Steven Yeun

Sometimes, we want Asians in the media, but we don't want them to talk about being Asian. For me, that's interesting because I'm from Asia. If you want me to be on television but I can't be Asian, I'm not being true to myself.

Ronny Chieng

One of the funny things about the racism of the system, when I started 30 years ago, I'm in an area called Koreatown and most of the kids were Asian. And when the kids did well, people said, "Well, of course, they did well. They're Asians." But when we had this huge influx of Latino children from Central America, they said, "Oh, you're gonna have problems now."

Rafe Esquith

She reached down and traced my eyebrows. 'You do have really beautiful eyes.' 'We get to keep them,' I said. Grace started at my voice. 'What?' 'It's the one thing we keep. Our eyes stay the same.' I unclenched my fists. 'I was born with these eyes. I was born for this life.

Maggie Stiefvater

There are very few people who are Asian who have the kind of global reach that I have, not just with Asians but with non-Asians. I've worked hard for what my name represents, my brand, not just in Britain but around the world.

Gurinder Chadha

If I was at school and one of my friends said something funny, I'd write it down in a notebook and take it to the writers meetings. I never told my friends about it. I just thought I could incorporate stuff that was true to life.

Daniel Kaluuya

I think when people talk about race relations in America, they talk about African-American and white people. Asians are not often brought into the conversation. But there's a historical legacy of issues between them. It's hard to be like, 'What about us?' But we are a little underrepresented.

Ronny Chieng

Yeah. I?ve always felt this way. I mean we?re born alone, we die alone. And while we?re here we are absolutely, completely sealed in our own bodies. Really weird. Kinda freaks me out to think about it. We can only experience the outside world through our own slanted perception of it. Who knows what you?re really like. I just see what I think you?re like.

Tom Ford

Asian people have a unique way about them and a different sense of beauty. It's exotic to me. I like they way Asians project their feelings. There's a hardness to the culture, but at the same time there's a delicateness.

Paz Vega

You're not a Black man. You're a human being in God's eyes. So when you sit down to talk to someone and you talk to them in really intelligent terms, you ask difficult questions, there's a militancy that's assigned to you without you asking for it, because you are simply judged by what you look like. If you're a white person asking the same questions, you'd be one of these CNN guys and say how brilliant he is. That doesn't work for you, because this is the world we live in.

James McBride

Why don't we hear more about and from Asians when it comes to race in America? Are Asians the new Invisible Man - there but not there? In some ways, yeah. Blacks and whites are always carping about the metrics of racism. And any conversation about immigration reform is immediately flipped into a referendum on Hispanics.

John Ridley

When the Kerner Commission told white America what black America has always known, that prejudice and hatred built the nation’s slums, maintains them and profits by them, white America could not believe it. But it is true. Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies in our own country, poverty and racism, and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed in the eyes of the world as hypocrites when we talk about making people free - (Chapter 9).