Ellis Island quotes:

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Nonfiction writers are second-class citizens, the Ellis Island of literature. We just can't quite get in. And yes, it pisses me off. -- William Styron
He looked like someone with a steerage ticket on the titanic. Somebody who'd be standing in line at Ellis Island. Undiluted and old-blooded. Also cute. -- Rainbow Rowell
Most American Jews came from the lower middle classes, and therefore they brought with them not a lot of Jewish culture. The American Jewish story starts with Ellis Island, and the candy store in the Bronx. -- Arthur Hertzberg
I am the byproduct of an Ellis Island orgy, basically. I'm everything. I've got quite a mixture in me. I know a lot of it and I don't know some of it. I'm pretty mixed up, but mostly Russian and Irish. -- Gavin DeGraw
I was literally fabricated over in France and born about six months after the boat landed at Ellis Island. This was the heart of the Depression. For the first 12 years of my life we lived in a terrible ghetto on the East River. -- Bob Cousy
I'm here not just as an actress but as a woman, an African-American, a granddaughter of Ellis Island immigrants, a person who could not have afforded college without the help of student loans and as one of millions of volunteers working to re-elect President Obama! -- Kerry Washington
We must not forget that these men and women who file through the narrow gates at Ellis Island, hopeful, confused, with bundles of misconceptions as heavy as the great sacks upon their backs these simple, rough-handed people are the ancestors of our descendants, the fathers and mothers of our children. -- Walter Weyl
The Islamic community today is faced with a new version of an old struggle. My late mother used to say it doesn't matter whether you came to this country on the Mayflower or on a slave ship, through Ellis Island or the Rio Grande. We're all in the same boat now. -- Carol Moseley Braun
You, the Spirit of the Settlement! ... Not understand that America is God's crucible, the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here, you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries... -- Israel Zangwill
Whether our ancestors came here on the Mayflower, on slave ships, whether they came to Ellis Island or LAX in Los Angeles, whether they came yesterday or walked this land a thousand years ago our great challenge for the 21st century is to find a way to be One America. We can meet all the other challenges if we can go forward as One America. -- William J. Clinton
No, my family is Russian, Georgian, via Ellis Island. -- Mitch Kapor
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My grandparents, they came through Ellis Island in 1923, and you know, I'd heard all the stories. -- James Gray
The thing I love about Vegas is that it's a melting pot. It's like working Ellis Island. -- Don Rickles
My grandparents used to tell me stories about their trip to Ellis Island from Russia and life on the Lower East Side of New York. -- James Gray
At Ellis Island, I mean, you didn't go there if you arrived in first class. It was only the poorest, the people in the worst shape. -- James Gray
I don't know the numbers, but roughly half of the people who came through Ellis Island returned home. They came here to make money, not to make history. -- Aleksandar Hemon
Your grandparents did not endure the indignities of a steerage journey to Ellis Island so that you could stand outside a discothÃ¨que and beg a wallpaper designer to take you in with him. -- Fran Lebowitz
Beginning with a trip out to Ellis Island, I saw for myself where thousands of European immigrants took their first steps onto American soil, bringing with them nothing but their ambition: people such as Erich von Stroheim and Adolph Zukor. -- Paul Merton
Ellis Island lies in New York Harbor 1,300 feet from Jersey City, New Jersey, and one mile from the tip of Manhattan. At the time of the first European settlement, it was mostly mud, sand, and oyster shells, which nearly disappeared at high tide. -- David Souter

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