Ralph Boston Quotes

I remember vividly one distinct memory of arriving in Hong Kong and being the only blonde haired girl in this sea of international students, and thinking, 'Oh, my God. There's no hiding here.'

Culture clash is terrific drama.

It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one's own.

It's not every day that you get to be affectionate around something, it just doesn't happen that often.

Wherever we go, across the Pacific or Atlantic, we meet, not similarity so much as 'the bizarre'. Things astonish us, when we travel, that surprise nobody else.

It's the first time it's happened to me and maybe the last. It's a strange sensation, not normal for me. I can't remember scoring three goals, even when I was a kid.

Foreigners are not like the people I am used to here.

When I went to Australia, I had this feeling, like, 'Wow, this is really a different country.' I think that feeling of genuine foreignness, that this is a very different culture, which is increasingly rare in our globalised world.

I once wrote that the first week in Jerusalem was the hardest week of my life. I was different, other; my clothes were different, as was my language. All of the classes were in Hebrew - science, bible, literature. I sat there not understanding one word. When I tried to speak, everyone would laugh at me.

Our people have not been exposed to Muslims, and they are frightened. It's a new phenomenon for them... Hundreds of Muslims mean nothing in Belgium or London, but it does mean something in Slovakia.

That's bizarre to see, L.A., downtown, and to feel like you're the only person there.

Being a big black man in China in the mainland, walking down the street, you have everyone looking at you, 'Basketball?' They don't really see a lot of us around, maybe on TV, so they're just looking.

Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they are all along, busy with living; they don't talk or look like me. The rhythm of their day is entirely different; I am foreign.

For me, diversity is not a value. Diversity is what you find in Northern Ireland. Diversity is Beirut. Diversity is brother killing brother. Where diversity is shared - where I share with you my difference - that can be valuable. But the simple fact that we are unlike each other is a terrifying notion. I have often found myself in foreign settings where I became suddenly aware that I was not like the people around me. That, to me, is not a pleasant discovery.

Lord, I never seen blue hair on a black woman before or since. Leroy say you look like a cracker from outer space.

You can live in the same city your entire life and still be completely a foreigner when you step out, in your old age, onto the street.

Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.

The criteria or the paradigm for us is not the West, not the Western paradigm, because the West has its own culture, we have our own culture, they have their own reality, we have our own reality.

But Americans are different from everyone else in the world - except the Canadians, and Americans are more different from the Canadians than they often think.

Each artist attracts his own different set of fans. And G3 over the years has created it's own audience as well... they know it's something unusual and special that they're not going to get anywhere else ... young and old, both sexes, all come out. They all look at each other like, Wow, what are those people over there ? ... They're surprised at their own diversity.

India is a place where one of the great pleasures for a foreigner is that you're constantly surprised. Everywhere you look is something that is either funny, or very moving, but there is always so much that is so unexpected.

We cannot abandon this rabbit hole for fear of a traumatic encounter with our own culture.

There's a real connection between the history of print in Europe and nationalism, and how those two things could be formed. I think they may both now be ending, for good and bad, but I think mainly for good. Either globalism was supposed to make people all realize this is one big business going on and we should know what's going on everywhere, or it makes people say, "I don't want to become part of this thing. I want to be incredibly different from you and I want to uphold my local behavior." Dress a certain way.

I just stood there staring, because while I've seen a lot of weird things, I hadn't ever seen that.

A large share of our art heritage is now derived from peoples whose idea of art was quite other than ours, and even from peoples to whom the very idea of art meant nothing.