Alan Hovhaness Quotes

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.

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

History … liberated me from a past that was no longer relevant. I was ready to explore the American side of my hyphenated psyche. I'm still doing it

The Indians seemed to be living in a place and in a way that was of immense importance to me. So I associate learning to read - English, oddly enough - with wanting to know about Indians. I'm still growing into it. I've never outgrown that.

Growing up, my mom always knew that I was more on the Black side than the Spanish side, just because I didn't speak Spanish.

We all have to consciously make efforts to identify our roots and nurture them.

It wasn't a conscious decision to search for my Asian self; it was an urgency born out of an emptiness I was trying to fill.

Now that I'm older, I appreciate my culture and I appreciate Spanish. I feel bad I didn't pick up on it earlier.

I think by embracing your heritage and your history, it just serves you so much more, and you become a deeper and more powerful person by embracing them.

I had gone to Europe . . . to reach for a place as a serious artist, but I never doubted that I must return. I was - and am - an American.

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

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.

I think I was interested in history without knowing it and that became very clear when I arrived in France. Everything that I was really interested in was there, but I knew nothing, no education, no art education, no education beyond high school. It was extremely overwhelming and it still is.

I wanted to wash off the experience of Africa but obviously I couldn't because that's who I was.

Before doing 'Midnight's Children,' I didn't really have a chance to explore my Indian side. The Indian side of my heritage was always present, but it did not particularly define my identity. Being English was more an identity-defining status. I was born and brought up in London. Yes, my father is Parsi.

I've discovered my Jewishness late in life. And I've really enjoyed exploring that world.

My music is really about people connecting with their identities, even if they aren't Jewish.

I had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves.

I grew up in the age of discount air fare, and for me, the act of joining a culture was a great way about learning about that different culture. So I grew up in the South, and went to college in the North, and found out that I learned about myself as a Southerner by leaving the South and going to the Northeast.

Travel early and travel often. Live abroad, if you can. Understand cultures other than your own. As your understanding of other cultures increases, your understanding of yourself and your own culture will increase exponentially.

In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture.

I'm slowly feeling more Chinese and feel I should be more proud of being Chinese and appreciate where I've come from.

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.

Sometimes, growing up, I tried to be very Latina; I would change my voice... experiment with my hair a lot, trying to figure out who I was in a primarily white school.

Well, it's an adventure story, and a Bildungsroman, of course, but there was also the intention to describe a culture that had been seen in rather narrow terms.