Joel Coen Quotes

I do not want to be misunderstood that you need a dose of persecution in order, really, to have a sense of your identity. Otherwise, you know, there would be no American Jews. Even if you're not strictly, fiercely Orthodox, you commit yourselves to a community of memory.

I've never understood people who say they're not a practicing Jew. You never hear a black guy say he's not a practicing African-American. What does it even mean?

I didn't emphasize my Jewishness because I wanted to. I just happen to have been raised in a family where everybody happened to talk like this, so why would I talk like somebody else?

I'm a Persian Jew, and we don't speak Hebrew.

I'm a Jew.

I have no religion, but I can't escape being extremely Jewish ethnically - that is, culturally. In other words, I'm not religious, but I worry and I'm neurotic. And I'm very good with money.

I like the fact that I'm from the South and that I have this rich history behind me. I come from a family of storytellers. They can't just tell you how someone went to the store. They have to tell you who they saw, what they were wearing, what they said, what they had in their grocery cart.

There's something innately funny and warm about being Jewish. I think it's something to be embraced and respected.

I rejected being a lot of things that I grew up in, and yet I didn't. I got all my tactics from where I grew up... I can talk about all the people in those environments more than I can talk about the teachers at Juilliard or anyone else.

What it depends on is someone's upbringing and the traditions and that is how you decide if you are Jewish or not.

I used to think the whole world was Jewish.

I didn't really grow up with any traditions. I grew up in a pretty liberal household in Southern California. I think that's part of my interest in thinking about heritage. I don't have a second language or cultural heritage in that way.

My mother is Jewish. We celebrated all the Jewish holidays at home.

Judaism is not, per se, a religion in the sense most Americans think of. Even if you don't adhere to the various precepts, you're still a Jew.

I'm proud of who I am, and I'm proud I grew up in Puerto Rico.

Coming from Canada, being a writer and Jewish as well, I have impeccable paranoia credentials.

I'm of Arab background.

I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.

I have very distinct memories about growing up as part of what was then a very small Jewish community in Buffalo Grove, IL.

Being Indian is not blood as much as it is culture.

I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.

I think we were raised in a nice Texas Jewish family where education was the most important thing, and close behind that was the arts. It was emphasized and expected that we'd play piano.

Most of the Jewish writer friends I have are American, and I feel closer to them because they're always obsessed with one issue - identity: what does it mean to be an American Jew?

I believe in Judaism, I was raised a Jew, I'm happy to be one - or proud to be one.

I think that people assumed I was white because of my last name. My father is Caucasian, my mother is Hispanic. But English was my second language, believe it or not.