Adam Richman Quotes

I write for the people I grew up with. I took extreme pains for my book to not be a native informant. Not: 'This is Dominican food. This is a Spanish word.' I trust my readers, even non-Spanish ones.

Writers can write outside their ethnicity or sex depending how open and vulnerable they wish to be.

No one except Hollywood stars and very rich Texans wore Indian jewelry. And there was a plethora of dozens if not hundreds of athletic teams that in essence were insulting us, from grade schools to college. That's all changed.

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.

I take the responsibility of playing another ethnicity very, very seriously, and I promise myself and those people that I will represent them with as much dignity and integrity as I can muster.

I don't think anyone could write about another culture and get it 100 percent accurate.

We have learned the lines of good taste through history and our sense of guilt, be it post-colonial or post-Holocaust.

Casting ethnic characters is a very hard thing to do, but it's important. It's also interesting.

If you get into multicultural sort of casting for no other reason than to diversify, then it seems false.

You really have to soak up the culture of the people to get it right. If you're making a fiction film, it's entertainment, but you want it to be as real as possible.

Anytime you're writing stories about a group of people with whom you have limited experience, there's a lot of guesswork.

Some things are really sacred and important to other cultures, so you have to be aware, politically, about those things before you just adopt them.

It's good to be proud of your heritage and your culture, but pride can be perverted.

I'm not very happy to be classified as another Japanese designer. There is no one characteristic that all Japanese designers have.

Cultural appropriation is a big problem, but the thing is, I didn't invent my life. I really lived in Africa.

Even if Pearl S. Buck hadn't spent most of her life in China, she'd have every right to write about it.

I think audiences are far too sophisticated now to have an English actor putting on a Russian accent - it feels fake.

There are artists in Belgium who try to imitate American artists. But it's like, if you're Belgian pretending to be American, you won't be better than the American because you aren't American. You have to do your own stuff.

I try my best to live by the principle that if you're going to be telling a story that you didn't live, tell it with as much respect as you can for the people who did live it.

Most Mexican restaurants serve fake, heavy versions of my home country's cuisine. But real Mexican food is full of brilliant, fresh flavors.

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.

I'm not trying to explain other cultures, or to give a fair and balanced account of a country, or the top ten things you need to know. I'm not trying to spread world peace and understanding. I'm not an advocate or an activist or an educator or a journalist. I'm out there trying to tell stories the best I can.

I think that any story that intends on being culturally authentic and true to life experiences will be a great story. Even if that culture isn't a hip-hop-centric one.

I think we should appreciate ethnicity and diversity, and appreciate the uniqueness of all people, but I don't think we should be ethnocentric. These things are not ultimate.

I think that all journalists, specifically print journalists, have a responsibility to educate the public. When you handle a culture's intellectual property, like journalists do, you have a responsibility not to tear it down, but to raise it up. The depiction of rap and of hip-hop culture in the media, I think, is one that needs more of a responsible approach from journalists.