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Expats Quotes

Browse 23 quotes about Expats.

Expats Quotes

“I recognised just how different Alexander was from children raised in Britain. The most obvious distinctions were his maturity and broadness of view. He hadn't lost his innocence or childish ability to play, but he enjoyed conversations with adults, and he saw no problem in playing with any child of any age. He was wonderfully gentle with the little ones. He was never fazed by differences, and cultural diversity was of interest rather than a reason for prejudice, though, - like our Nepali friends - he liked to classify people.”

Growing UpCultural DiversityCultural DifferencesNepalAgeismPlayingExpat LifeExpatriateExpatsAgeist Society
Book:A Glimpse of Eternal Snows: A Journey of Love and Loss in the Himalayas
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“Like most young people in Ghana’s rural areas in those days, for much of my childhood I pictured America as a heavenly place where neither poverty nor any of the myriad problems we saw all around us existed. From what little history I was taught in elementary and middle school, I knew about slavery and how Blacks in America were treated during that era, but I also knew that slavery had long since been abolished. What I envisioned was an America in which people of all races lived happily and in perfect harmony.”

GoalAmerican DreamAfricaDreamingExpats
Book:The Boy from Boadua: One African’s Journey of Hunger and Sacrifice in Pursuit of a Dream
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“People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain.. or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris.”

WritingIdeasInspirationCreativityTravelFranceParisAsiaOpiumPoppiesBurmaOpiatesWriter S BlockSaffronExpatriateExpatsParisiansOpiateExpatriot
Book:Crepuscule
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“Still he considered playing Pachinko the best investment of his free time, soaking in the local stench and bad breathe of other lonely Japanese people as an alternative way of blending into the colorful local scenes which he yearned to be a part of.”

InvestmentImmigrationJapanGamblingWasting TimeTravelerIntegrationCity LifeTokyoImmigrantExpat LifeExpatsWasting MoneyForeignerGamblersTravelling To A Foreign CountryPachinkoWhite Man And The Pachinko GirlIntegrating Into A New CountryJapanese GamblingPlaying PachinkoWatching People
Book:The White Man and the Pachinko Girl
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“It was now hard to believe how difficult it had once been to follow a person in Bangkok in a time before smart phones and social media. The new generation demanded to be followed online. It was in their digital blood. A small investment in a few specialized apps, and not even Sherlock Holmes in his most inspired opium dreams could have imagined the possibilities.”

Technology QuotesNoir FictionHardboiledBangkokExpatsPrivate Eye Thailand
Book:Crackdown
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“Let me share what I’ve learned about Thai politics. Keep a distance from those doing a victory dance in the end zone unless you understand their game, how it’s scored and how many players each side has. If you can’t figure out the rules of the game, you won’t know when the game has started and when it’s over. Don’t put a bet on a game you don’t understand.”

Noir FictionHardboiledGame Of LifeExpatsBangkok Thriller
Book:Crackdown
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“Thais have a saying about a frog living inside a coconut shell. The frog believes that the world inside the shell is the whole universe. In the private investigation business, Vincent Calvino had clients who like the frog. What they saw from inside their shell blinded them, made them unable to solve a problem. So they hired Calvino. He knew the drill. Shells offered comfort and security. Leaving could be a dangerous business.”

Thriller NovelsThailandNoir FictionCultural IdentityExpatsInsular Existence
Book:The Risk of Infidelity Index: A Vincent Calvino Crime Novel
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“from, The Siamese Collectors: He needed a jolt. A drastic change. An explosion of old habits. He wanted to drop a hot grenade into his broken life. So he cooked up Barcelona and Madrid, Paris, Hong Kong and sent flurries of e-mails with resumes. And finally, when the only offer arrived in a beaten yellow envelope bearing exotic stamps, his father insisted he take it. At first he refused. Thailand to him was third rate, tainted by ideas of the Golden Triangle, white slavery, sleazy tourists and terrorism. But he only had two choices and neither he nor his father lingered when action was needed. So they said a quick goodbye on the porch, blinking at the crisp noon sun and sweating as the taxi idled. His father said, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell them anything.” His plane arrived sometime in the middle of the night. A lone policeman dipped in leather boots and wearing a motorcycle helmet with a loose chinstrap stood guard in the Bangkok airport. Treece slipped his passport into a pocket and watched a dark-eyed Thai girl half-asleep on her arm inside a little glass money exchange booth. A moment later in the open lobby, he nodded to a man behind a walrus tooth moustache holding a piece of cardboard that said: Mike Treece.”

ThailandExpatriateExpatsSiamese
Author:Erich R. Sysak
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“But if I knew any of this back then, I didn't yet have the vocabulary for that knowledge. And perhaps because of that, without intending to do so, I had continued the pattern of some of the men, and most of the women, in my family, reaching s far back as we had memory. We were careless, and shiftless, and unthinking. We left our ancestral homes, we birthed and sometimes buried our children in far-flung places, and we started afresh over and over. We cared for land, but too often it wasn't our land to care for.”

Immigrant ExperienceExpatsImmigrant Parents
Book:Leaving Before the Rains Come
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“After a year or two, the long term expats won’t see the beggars the same way. After a year or two, the cheeky young monks won’t make them smile. After a year or two, the newest restaurant opening won’t pull them in. To preserve they will withdraw and settle. They will come to accept the limits of it all. The hype won’t bother them. The promise won’t motivate them. They will have accepted their odd expat life, their awkward place in the chimera that is Myanmar today.”

BurmaExpatsMyanmarYangon
Author:Craig Hodges
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“We depend on this give-and-take when living abroad. You can’t exile yourself from your homeland and not always feel that tidal pull of return. Those minor details, the commercial jingles and pop songs, the chain restaurants and decade-defining shades of our blue jeans, are details you don’t even think about until you are face-to-face with a society that has very little to do with your own. Suddenly those one-hit wonders become a secret language, the very vestige of American culture.”

AmericaCultureTravelMiddle EastTravel WritingExpat LifeExpatsTravel Literature
Book:The Confusion of Languages
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“Catapultata in un paese straniero, a lungo considerato nemico, obbediente a regole a lei incomprensibili se prima non le venivano spiegate, mia nonna si era riservata uno spazio che apparteneva a lei sola - un'Isola dei Morti che lei visitava quotidianamente. Non c'era giorno in cui lei, senza farne parola, non raggiungesse con il pensiero tutti coloro che aveva perduto.”

VietnamVietnamese LiteratureExpats
Book:La Princesse et le Pêcheur
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“Philip lost count of the Pundaris who came and went from the flat that evening. His ears were filled with their easy chatter, and his nose with the overpowering aroma of the incense from the okaly tree, some of which he noticed was being rolled into strips of dried yellibellee leaves, then lit, and then passed from guest to guest with much pleasurable clucking and humming. When his turn came, his lungs filled with a rush of menthol and cinnamon, edged he thought with an aftertaste of fly spray.”

CustomsExpatsInnocents AbroadLocal TraditionsNamisansPundarisWedding Preparations
Book:A Traveller's Guide to Namisa: a novel
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“Such is the nature of an expatriate life. Stripped of romance, perhaps that's what being an expat is all about: a sense of not wholly belonging. [...] The insider-outsider dichotomy gives life a degree of tension. Not of a needling, negative variety but rather a keep-on-your-toes sort of tension that can plunge or peak with sudden rushes of love or anger. Learning to recognise and interpret cultural behaviour is a vital step forward for expats anywhere, but it doesn't mean that you grow to appreciate all the differences.”

GivingMeanRomanceGrowsDifferencesStepsDegreesNegativeAppreciateVarietyTensionBelongingOutsidersBehaviourToesRecognisePlungeSteps ForwardDichotomyInsidersExpatriatesExpats
Author:Sarah Turnbull
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