Ariel Dorfman Quotes

The basic principle I have is that what is most Korean is what is the most international. I don't want to come here and act like I'm an American. I want to showcase the dynamic potential Korea has, and I want to prove that as an artist.

Yoga is not Indian; it does not belong to India.

I think of Westernized culture as a good visual for my music.

Some Indians will come up and say that a story reminded them of something very specific to their experience. Which may or may not be the case for non-Indians.

Where I work, in the Arab region, people are busy taking up Western innovations and changing them into things which are neither conventionally Western, nor are they traditionally Islamic.

In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything - from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up - grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music.

Being married to a daughter of India is a natural complement of my being in this country for 30 years. My roots are very much in this country, even though I remain a Westerner.

The trouble is, once you say something about a source, then you've pegged it down, and so now I'm reluctant to say anything. If I say I developed 50 different shapes from Mississippian tumuli, that doesn't mean they're copies of tumuli - I'm not ripping off those shapes.

Any direct experience that I have with indigenous peoples and their plights may feed into the nature of the story I choose to tell. In fact, it almost certainly will.

I believe we have to bring Broadway a little Latino flair. We have to keep it alive.

A cultural thing that is funny to me is that every time I go out in D.C. after a show, all the nightclubs and restaurants are owned by Iranians and Afghans. It's funny to me how we lost our countries but we gained the nightlife.

I think I am kind of put on this Earth to speak of being between worlds in my films.

What I want to tell people is that you can mix the culture a little bit and it's not always appropriation.

Sometimes styles don't translate. Rey Mysterio was a master of doing that. No matter where he went, Rey could make his style adapt. But not everyone is Rey Mysterio.

I think it's time British filmmakers stopped allowing themselves to be colonized so ruthlessly by U.S. ideas and stopped looking so slavishly to the U.S. market. It demeans filmmaking when they do that.

Coming from a different perspective on a society is really interesting. I love the Paul Thomas Anderson's 'Phantom Thread,' and that's a version of Britishness and Englishness made by an American.

I mean, London has shaped me as a person. My parents are Nigerian so I've had the luxury of blending different cultures together just through my everyday life.

We have taken so much from your culture, I wish you had taken something from ours...For there were some beautiful and good things within it. Perhaps now that the time has come, We are fearful that what you take will be lost.... I shall grab the instruments of the white man's success: His education, his skills, and society.

We are taking our culture and suturing it to America. Like gum on the bottom of a shoe, we are not going to disappear. Unlike other peoples who totally assimilated, we are more interested in co-assimilation.

I'm not trying to explain other cultures, or to give a fair and balanced account of a country, or the top ten things you need to know. I'm not trying to spread world peace and understanding. I'm not an advocate or an activist or an educator or a journalist. I'm out there trying to tell stories the best I can.

I really didn't want to be boxed into becoming a certain kind of film-maker - becoming the Maori story film-maker because I had made those short films.

People keep saying I'm westernizing Chinese food. No I'm not. McDonald's, KFC, Starbucks, have done it big time, way before me.

We cannot blame globalisation for diluting our cultural heritage and music, as our music is respected more outside India than here.

Hollywood and film portray who we are as a people and what we value as a culture.

I hate the marketing side of business where, 'Oh let's do a shoe for this clientele or for the Chinese or for the Japanese.' We're doing the same products for everyone.