E. T. A. Hoffmann Quotes

I was not born in a teepee - that I know of. I actually don't know where I was born.

'Who was your mother?' 'Never had none!' said the child, with another grin. 'Never had any mother? What do you mean? Where were you born?' 'Never was born!' 'Do you know who made you?' 'Nobody, as I knows on,' said the child, with a short laugh. . . . 'I 'spect I grow'd.'

My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families - second families, perhaps I should say.

I've always known that my father's father and grandfather and grandmother were from Mexico. I've never denied it. I've always said it.

I've known where my heritage is from all along.

Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.

Maybe if I go far enough back into my ancestry, I have African roots or something. I've got no idea.

More and more I understand that it's very fine not to know where you come from.

I love many places to which I have no connection, but identifying an ancestor, or someone I think is an ancestor, has taken me to places I'd never have gone to otherwise.

I was born on 7 September 1917 at Sydney in Australia. My father was English-born and a graduate of Oxford; my mother, born Hilda Eipper, was descended from a German minister of religion who settled in New South Wales in 1832. I was the second of four children.

I was researching my family tree, and I was deeply hoping I was going to turn out to be Eastern European, but I'm not.

My grandfather is from Peshawar; he was born there.

I know where I come from and what my roots are.

The most important thing in life is to know where you come from, and I know where I come from.

You've got to remember where you come from.

Sometimes it can be easy to forget where your roots are or where you came from.

It's always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you're going.

Where you come from is such a huge part of who you are today.

There is a strong propensity in the human mind to trace up our ancestry as to high and as remote a source as possible; and if our pride and our ambition cannot be gratified by a real statement of facts, fable is substituted for truth, and the imagination is taxed to supply the deficiency.

How do we know who we are if we don’t know where we’ve been?

You can properly call him a son of anything you please.

As you get older, you get more... genealogical.

I was Everett LeRoi Jones. My grandfather's name was Everett.

All of our ancestors came from somewhere.

Family is funny, and so it was not an unnatural thing for me, growing up, not to know anything about my dad or about the Vance side of our family.