Shari Sebbens Quotes

The history of ideas is littered with the corpses of those who have tried to define culture.

I decided to go to Latin America because many of my students in Washington emigrated from this region and inspired me to learn more about their home countries.

Cinema is an art form that is designed to go across borders. And as a filmmaker, the only way I can direct a movie is when I feel close to my culture.

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

Doing any kind of culture in America in which you are not trying to affirm a European aesthetic is war.

There is this really old school stereotypical notion in Australia that to be Aboriginal you have to be black: anything but white or pale skinned. What 'The Sapphires' does is open up the conversation that I've been having my whole life, the fact that being indigenous isn't about the color of your skin; it's about your connection to your culture.

I'm three-quarters Russian, so I've always felt an outsider. But I don't think you can be in a play with John Of Gaunt's 'This sceptred isle' speech and not feel proud to be British.

Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.

I've got headdresses and robes from all over: I am the mystery of everybody's story.

I have always felt more at home in a culture that has nothing to do with the one I was born and brought up in.

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.

It's because we are so flooded with American culture that we're startled when we see ourselves up there on the screen.

People look at me and they don't see what they think is a typical Aboriginal.

And why is our music called world music? I think people are being polite. What they want to say is that it's third world music. Like they use to call us under developed countries, now it has changed to developing countries, it's much more polite.

The thing about being an Indian person is that you feel most at home with your own people.

I think if I was Trinidadian, I would latch more on to the myths and romanticise the place more. I don't think it's my place to do that - they're not really mine. I'm an outsider.

I love where I'm from. I don't live there because of the circumstances, but all my family is there. It's what's inside, it's not what's outside that determines the culture and the feeling.

As a child of West Texas, I identify with Hispanic culture every bit as much as I do North American culture.

We need to help students and parents cherish and preserve the ethnic and cultural diversity that nourishes and strengthens this community - and this nation.

Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality.

You'd never know it from reading the rest of the Native writers, but Indians actually grew up with American pop culture.

I suppose I have become a sort of living monument in Portugal. But I come from a family with roots all over the world, so the idea of patriotism is not very strong in me. My country is the country of Chekhov, Beethoven, Velasquez - writers I like, painters and artists I admire.

I see myself as British, and I want to be celebrated by Britain.

From a purely ethnological point of view, I was not a period-born Dada.

Somebody told me once I wasn't Latin enough, and that made me laugh.