Joyce Banda Quotes

I grew up in a small town in Sudan. There weren't many cars, so we did things in the countryside near where we lived.

I've also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I've tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book.

The older I grow the more I see the influence of my family on my life. I didn't always see it. It was up to our parents to see that we had our education in a town that hadn't yet realized what racial prejudice was but actually knew and practiced it on occasion.

Mom ran the house, so we grew up Portuguese.

I was brought up by the English side of my family, who are very repressed and working class. Absolutely lovely, but very English.

While growing up, I lived in a traditional joint family in Mumbai's suburbs.

I come from a well-educated and cultured, middle-class Maharashtrian family and have been brought up with social awareness.

My family, my background... it just parallels really nicely with a lot of social and cultural movements.

The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.

Bilingualism lets you have your cake and eat it. The new language opens the doors to the best jobs in society; the old language allows you to keep your sense of 'who you are.' It preserves your identity. With two languages, you have the best of both worlds.

I didn't choose to come to the United States, but being raised here has shaped exactly who I am today, and I can't imagine that being taken away from me.

Madea is a cross between my mother and my aunt. She's the type of grandmother that was on every corner when I was growing up.

I am constantly accused of being 'First World.' So what should I do? I can't apologise for my environment, upbringing, aesthetic.

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?

My mama is African American and from Wisconsin. My baba was born in Iran. My parents have stressed the idea of creating your own path, and creating your own identity is part of that. That's why embracing these two cultures is important to me.

I went to a very posh school, I had a very privileged upbringing with parents who were incredibly loving and brilliant. I've never tried to hide that; I'm not going to change my accent or talk in a different way.

My heroes in real life are definitely my mom for being true to herself, for having a foot in both worlds, for being so very polite - Canadian and also such a traditional Greek woman. I would sum it up this way: the life lesson she would say is be polite while you're breaking the rules.

I grew up in a very rural community in England.

I used to live in a village, and I always loved listening to old people. Unfortunately, it was always women who were talking, because after the war, very few men were around. I spent my entire life living in the village. The village is always talking about itself; people are talking to each other as the village makes sense of itself.

I felt it was a privilege that I came from such a rich background. I had the best of both worlds. My mother was a Shia Muslim, while my father was a janoi-clad man. He never pretended to be secular.

Most importantly, I realize the value of the other people - the extended family - the other people within my community, my cultures: my teachers and the other people I call Auntie, Uncle, Godfather, Godbrother, whatever. These are people who pulled you in and made you part of their lives and their homes.

History is of all subjects the one which is most engaged with people's perceptions of themselves, identity, politics, all those things which shape the modern world.

There's a misconception that I can't relate to the quote-unquote 'Asian-American experience' because I didn't grow up with an Asian mom and dad. And that's just not true. I am Asian American, and so playing a girl who is half Korean, half white, but her white dad tried really hard to connect with her mom's heritage - that's very familiar to me.

I was torn between the Americanness my mom wanted for me and the Mexicanness my father wanted - they were wrestling for cultural influence over me.

Even though I grew up in America, at home we spoke mostly Chinese, because my mom is from Taiwan.