Amos Oz Quotes

The purity of Jewish upbringing - the restrictions that one carries through life being a 'nice Jewish girl' - what a burden.

As a Latino growing up in Spanish harlem, it's not easy trying not to be hot-headed.

My mother is American. I first went to school in America, and we came back when I was about six to rural Norfolk. In primary school, I was teased immediately and mercilessly. I probably dropped that accent within about 10 days.

America beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummeled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism.

When I grew up, you needed to have straight hair. It's symbolic of needing to be like everyone else, needing to look like everyone else. And what that meant was looking like the dominant ruling class in America.

I find being Irish quite a wearing thing. It takes so much work because it is a social construction. People think you are going to be this, this, and this.

The court of public opinion is open 24 hours a day.

I must dress in costly materials. People scrutinize every article I wear with critical curiosity. The very fact of having grown up in the West, subjects me to more searching observation.

Being in the space that I am as a writer, and just as a black dude in America, there's this push to be cool or be what you're expected to be. There's a need for a song that puts that in perspective. I think that's an important thing for young children to hear growing up.

It's complicated coming from a culture where to be a mother is more important than to have a career.

Tradition is an element that enters into play with destiny, because you are born into a particular family - Jewish or Islamic or Christian or Mexican - and your family determines to some extent what you are expected to become. And society is always there attempting to determine the role we will play within it.

At a certain period in time, the fashion industry was portraying this image of a totally unrealistic woman, women who are not allowed to be themselves.

I am shocked as to how much importance my weight garners in the world we live in. I don't know why it is so important, to be honest.

Once I hit 25, people started asking me about marriage and kids all the time. I remember hitting 35 and some would ask the same questions with a strange tone, as if my life was somehow over because I hadn't yet settled into their version of happiness.

I have people who say, 'You should dress up like this, or you should dress more modest; you should cover up more.' And then, at the other end of the spectrum, you have, like, 'Why are you still wearing your scarf? You're in America, you know.'

There's a momentum to being committed to a group that you think is good, and there's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to make your choice a good choice.

I went to high school in Frisco, Texas, where a lot of people look the same, dress the same, act the same. People are either like, 'You're not black enough for this' or 'You're not white enough for this.'

There is simply no dignified way for a woman to live alone. Oh, she can get along financially perhaps (though not nearly as well as a man), but emotionally she is never left in peace. Her friends, her family, her fellow workers never let her forget that her husbandlessness, her childlessness - her selfishness, in short - is a reproach to the American way of life.

I refuse to put the unnecessary strain of learning English upon my sisters for the sake of false pride or questionable social advantage.

The increasing tendency towards seeing people in terms of one dominant ‘identity’ (‘this is your duty as an American’, ‘you must commit these acts as a Muslim’, or ‘as a Chinese you should give priority to this national engagement’) is not only an imposition of an external and arbitrary priority, but also the denial of an important liberty of a person who can decide on their respective loyalties to different groups (to all of which he or she belongs).

You're Dominican only if you do this, this, and that. And if you do this and that, you'll be accepted to a certain degree and if you don't, people will scorn you for it.

In our society, any man who doesn't cry at his mother's funeral is liable to be condemned to death.

Culture is everything you don't have to do.

That is the one unforgivable sin in any society. Be different and be damned!

It was easy for me to be ridiculed and for both men and women to perceive that maybe I'm a bit crazy because I'm educated in the West and I have lost some of my basic decency as an African woman.