Tracy Reese Quotes

One of my beliefs is that there are certain institutions within a community which stand for the spirit and heart of that community, there's the church, the local football team, the local pub and the theatre.

People are always asking me what my favorite food is. I say, 'Food that tells me where I am.'

When you travel like I do, just within our own country the atmosphere is different. The environment is different; the way people talk is different. The energy is different. And that's just material-wise, with the local culture.

You go down South, and they're quirky; they have culture, and it's not uniformly true of our country. Our country has gotten a little blanded out, big sections of it. Even if you disagree with the politics, you have to appreciate the cuisine, the music, the literature.

I think it's an important thing, if you grew up in a neighbourhood that's different from the rest of the world, to remember what was different about your place and keep that in your heart, because that's what made you.

It's difficult when you travel around America to get local food; it used to be very easy. You went from town to town and were more in touch with things.

Where I come from, dressing is a culture. When I go back home, I cannot dress bad. I cannot miss, or people will be like, 'What's going on with you, Serge? Did you lose your mind, or what?' That's the culture.

I suppose more than anything, it's the way of life in this part of the country that influences my writing. In Eastern North Carolina, with the exception of Wilmington, most people live in small towns.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don't have names for what they are or haven't identified them all. We can't pinpoint exactly what makes each city's people unique yet.

I came from a town of maybe 30,000 people.

The food in south India is the food that I really love because it reminds me of home.

I like the idea of a world, even within a big giant city, where you're not anonymous. You have an identity, and that's an identity that's known just sort of by shopkeepers. I felt that as a kid, and I loved it.

Our appreciation of folk art will strengthen our identities, our pride in belonging to a community. People trained in the creative use of their hands soon acquire skills, excellent craftsmanship which will be the most important measure of how well we can industrialize.

Florida is a place of unparalleled diversity of backgrounds, experiences and vision. It makes our culture unique, but it can also make it difficult to define a common identity and create a sense of community that reaches beyond our neighborhoods to all corners of our state.

I need my fill of Indian home cooking.

My seven-year-old daughter knows old songs and how the neighborhoods got their names. There are little things: Businesses receive blessings from Hawaiian priests before opening, and everyone's kids have their debut luau. You can't really get through a day without doing something Hawaiian.

When you're choosing furniture for your home that's supposed to express who you are, what you are also saying is you want other people to infer what you want them to infer. What if they see something different? Wouldn't it be really depressing if you're trying to be bohemian and instead they see you as Rush Limbaugh?

I think my writing was certainly shaped from having lived in a place like Niverville as well as by the family that I came from, the religion that I had, that type of thing.

When you live in New York, one of two things happen - you either become a New Yorker, or you feel more like the place you came from.

Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe's wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.

I do quite like sightseeing. I like churches, museums, galleries and all that stuff. I love the smell of a church in Italy or the smell of an old greasy spoon somewhere. I like markets and little funny shops in the backstreets of Florence.

If I'm hunting down gifts, I like to buy locally.

I can't hide where I grew up or the flavors I grew up on.

I grew up in a small Southern town, kind of a counterculture to a small Southern mentality.

We all knew each other in the neighborhood. I loved living in El Paso. I had a wonderful childhood there.