Yasmine Hamdan Quotes

Colombian culture has had a huge influence on me and taught me a different way of looking at things - I was always different from the people I went to school with, and I learned to embrace that.

I personally am going to look for stuff that interests me and either has very little to do or has the right thing to do with my ethnicity.

But what I'm very interested in, whether it's writing, whether it's hosting a show, whether it's cooking food, I'm just into the discussions of identity, culture and the politics of culture.

Americans are hidden dragons to me.

I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.

My mum and dad were speaking all the time about, 'In Sudan we do this,' and 'In Egypt we do that,' so I was very aware of cultural differences. I was confused growing up; it gave me a feeling of being an outsider watching others. But I think this is good for a writer.

Living in different cultures helped me work out who I was going to be, separate from where I came from.

If we can't understand the Afghan family, we can't understand Afghanistan.

Black culture is something I don't relate to much at all.

I am very, very proud I am also Turkish and both of my parents are from Turkey. I was born in Germany and grew up there. By playing football, I learned my different cultures, and that is an advantage if you grow up as a person. You get a different view on certain things. I am very, very thankful I was able to pick the best from many cultures.

My mom is African-American, Native-American, Irish, and Creole, and my father is of Jewish, Russian, and Polish descent. It's made me who I am. Because of my diverse background, I think I can relate to many different people, different stories, and different communities.

I didn't realize how interesting the place I come from is until I left home and saw how other cultures handled things differently.

The English are very exotic to me.

Culture isn't all just about what can be tweaked and twitched in the simplest possible way. As people move around, they literally don't see what's around them, because they're wedded to earworms that are burrowing into their heads endlessly in a kind of negotiation with these tiny screens.

I think my Latino culture has equipped me with a different point of view than the rest of my counterparts, and seeing things from a different angle has helped me a lot. I feel very proud of my culture, of my Latino heritage.

I was brought up in many different cultures, moving around all the time, and I find my identity in my songs. I project the identity I want to have throughout the songs that I write.

You experience other cultures to give you a kind of shock that makes you look at your own culture. You appreciate it more as a result of being out of it, but you also realise there are some things lacking in your culture.

Most of my life I was occupied with American television and American food. My ethnicity was my choice. It still is.

I am very happy since when I am in different cities I can experience and learn different cultures!

At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional confusion with my mother related to our different beliefs. Hers was based in family history, which I didn't know anything about. I always felt hesitant in talking about Chinese culture and American culture.

Over the past several years, all of us as Canadians, and as members of the North American cultural and economic environment, have been to a greater or lesser extent party to a significant attitudinal change towards our culture.

The reason man does not experience his true cultural self is that until he experiences another self as valid he has little basis for validating his own self.

I have always felt more at home in a culture that has nothing to do with the one I was born and brought up in.

One of the great ambitions is to discover the diversity of the world, to discover who inhabits the world.

I grew up in Africa surrounded by a lot of culture. It's made me aware that the world is a big place.