Hilton Als Quotes

There's nothing universal about Indian families except that the family itself is deeply important across the country. It's sort of the fabric and anchor of our country.

As an African-American male born with a couple of strikes against you because of your skin color, I think it's very, very important to have some positive role models around, especially male influences.

In my town, I had only one adult American male role model: my father. I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be.

We're trying to infuse a little good into the American culture. Love God, love your neighbor, hunt ducks. Raise your kids, make them behave, love them. I don't see the down side to that.

The working-class black Southern Christian culture I come from still nurtures me, and I mean directly, daily.

There are some liberals eager to embrace a culture void of morals, but the majority of America is made up of honest, hard-working families who turned out in droves to protect the traditional way of life.

I'm not suggesting our music is the only music, but I am suggesting that there are certain elements in America's culture that are so precious that it would be a shame for them to go down the drain.

To me, redneck is a sense of self and a way of life.

I like to call the ethos I grew up with 'Oklahoma values.' But you'd be just as accurate if you said 'American values.' Except for our lack of a seacoast, Oklahoma has a little bit of just about everything that's American.

Americans are constantly extolling "traditions"; litanies to family values are at the center of every politician's discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as "identities" that can be accepted as part of larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation.

Country music is the song that speaks to the American condition. It's middle America. Eight out of 10 people. Maybe it's not the No. 1 choice, but they listen to country.

I come from a family that raised me with good southern values.

I'm an American; I'm not an African-American. I'm an American.

The new definition of a heathen is a man who has never played baseball.

But America isn't a country of family values; Mexico is a country of family values. This is a country of people who leave home.

The core of the American set of beliefs has remained pretty constant.

It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

I think that as far as language goes I'm an American, I'm afraid, my accent is American, my way of talk is an American way of talk, I'm an old-fashioned American. That's probably one of the reasons why I'm in England now and why I'll always stay in England.

Religion is the life of India, religion is the language of this country, the symbol of all its movements.

Irving Berlin has no place in American music -- he is American music.

A good country song taps into strong undercurrents of family, faith, and patriotism.

No matter how much people want to pretend that they're embarrassed by it, that they don't watch it, everybody knows about it. It's truly, I believe, one of the only art forms that America has actually given to the world, besides jazz and comic books.

I don't want to be like Europe. I want to be like America.

I was confident about America and the idea that in America people can become American without masking their ethnic identity.

Traditional Judeo-Christian values literally hang in the balance in America. They can be 'forgotten' in a single generation if they are not taught to children and teenagers... It could happen here if we don't defend what we believe.