Juan Mata Quotes

My sister and I used to act as maids and waitresses at my great aunt and uncle's cocktail parties, which were very much sort of retired, minor stars of the Yiddish theater and the Yiddish opera.

Let me tell you a story about when I was growing up in Spain. Many Sundays, we would invite 30, 40, 50 people to the countryside, and my father would make a big paella. He put me in charge of the fire and the 'stove' - the rocks that hold the pan. But he wouldn't let me cook. I got so unbelievably upset.

When I was young, one Sunday every month or so, my mom would load my brothers and me into our station wagon and drive 80 miles north to Orange County, where we'd meet our extended family at a Persian restaurant for lunch.

As a child, Navratri is something I looked forward to the most -The joy of being young and being around your friends and pandal-hopping is something I will always cherish.

I grew up in St. Louis in a tiny house full of large music - Mahalia Jackson and Marian Anderson singing majestically on the stereo, my German-American mother fingering 'The Lost Chord' on the piano as golden light sank through trees, my Palestinian father trilling in Arabic in the shower each dawn.

The happiest moments of my childhood were spent on my grandmother's front porch in Durham, N.C., or at her sister's farmhouse in Orange County, where chickens paraded outside the kitchen's screen door and hams were cured in the smokehouse.

I grew up in a big ol' Latin family, so that's all the music we used to play - salsa music. We'd always dance and have fun. You know how families get down, man! We just had fun with it.

I've been hearing fiddle music since I was in the womb, I'm sure.

Everyone knows that there are some odors that send you directly back to memories of your childhood - odors from Christmas time and so forth.

My mother had a lot of parties when I was a child. There'd always be a moment when she would place me on the upright piano and have me sing Somewhere 'Over the Rainbow'.

I used to spend my holidays there in my grandparents' large family house, with my numerous cousins. When I die, I am going to be buried in the village cemetery.

When I was a child, on Sunday mornings the family would assemble around the blue-leather-covered gramophone to listen to records.

Growing up, we had folk records.

My father is from Jamaica, and as a child I spent many holidays there. I remember the weight and drenching wetness of that hot rain, as I experienced it in my childhood, not only for itself, but for what it represented for me.

I was dancing for my grandpa from the time I was 4 or 5 years old in Puerto Rico.

My earliest memory was going to my grandma's house, milking the cows, and collecting the eggs from the chickens.

I really miss how we used to celebrate Diwali when I was a kid.

Flamenco was probably the first music that I may have heard as a baby, because my father played flamenco.

I always drank chocolate milk growing up and I remember my grandmother would always have it when I would visit her in the Dominican Republic - that's when it all started.

My family is Jamaican and Cuban, but we would go to see our Jamaican side every summer for three months and every Christmas. One of the things I used to love was climbing trees and picking ackee fruit for breakfast.

Each holiday season, as family members arrive and couches are unfolded, my household settles into a palpable nostalgia. Poorly designed photo albums are pulled from the shelves. Home videos of prepubescent siblings in matching pajamas dance across the television screen.

My husband and I grew up in India, so saag and tikka sauces are very nostalgic for us.

All my summer and Puja vacations were spent in Calcutta with my didima and a host of other relatives and friends.

I was practically raised with Christmas music.

Most summers we went to Bangladesh and stayed in Grandad's village, filled with relatives. I'm one of 67 grandchildren.