Lance Henriksen Quotes

All my life I believed I became an athlete through my own determination, but it's impossible to think that being descended from slaves hasn't left an imprint through the generations.

We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.

Writing about carrying the past on your back is a manifestation of my Irishness, because we go on and on and will for another two or three generations.

In many ways, each of us is the sum total of what our ancestors were. The virtues they had may be our virtues, their strengths our strengths, and, in a way, their challenges could be our challenges.

My mom, Irmelin, taught me the value of life. Her own life was saved by my grandmother during World War II.

Certainly my personality, my sense of humor, my outlook on life was informed by the experiences of my parents and the stories they shared with me.

Never underestimate how history injects itself into the present.

It's true of Irish Catholic families. They're big on story telling and big on saving stories from one generation to the next.

There's a line that runs between everyone and their ancestors, and you cannot sever that. Maybe disassociate from those ideas but not how you are connected to them. But, you can realise how you've benefited and change how you raise your kids.

So much of me is because of what my parents experienced in this country. So much of me is because of the things my parents overcame so that I could have the luxury of having a dream.

The idea that you're made up of the people that come before you and you somehow have some kind of conscious dialog with your genetics - I think it's really deep and interesting stuff.

Whatever you are is because of what your ancestors have done.

I've got a long history of suicid in my family; the good news is it skips a generation, so, if I'm lucky, my kids will kill themselves.

I grew up with very little religious training. Actually, like, none. I think what Jewishness I felt as a kid stemmed almost entirely from this atrocity in our family tree.

The past lives within the present, and our ancestors breathe through our children.

Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.

It was always so important to my dad for us to understand about the Genocide and to know about our family history.

Moreover, my ancestors' souls are sustained by the atmosphere of the house, since I answer for them the questions that their lives once left behind. I carve out rough answers as best I can. I have even drawn them on the walls. It is as if a silent, greater family, stretching down the centuries, were peopling the house.

History is the memory of time, the life of the dead and the happiness of the living.

Yes, your family history has some sad chapters. But your history doesn't have to be your future. The generational garbage can stop here and now.

Most of us are living out the unlived lives of our mothers, because they were not able to become the unique people they were born to be.

I feel a whole country growing inside me, thousands of years, millions of people, stupid, crazy, shrewd people, and all of them me. I never felt like that before, I never felt that there was anything inside me, even myself.

My great-great-great-grandmother walked as a slave from Virginia to Eatonton, Georgia... It is in memory of this walk that I chose to keep and to embrace my "maiden" name, Walker.

Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum... The story is our escort. Without it we are blind... It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.

I think part of the disappointing failure of the political process in America today is that it's asking us to forget countries' historic connections to other countries, or to the laws that have been made. They're willfully asking people to forget their country's history, and focus only on the present. It's bizarre.