Thomas Chatterton Williams Quotes

A people's relationship to their heritage is the same as the relationship of a child to its mother.

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.

I have a sense that many Americans, especially those like me with European or foreign parents, feel they have to invent their families just as they have to invent themselves.

To understand and reconnect with our stories, the stories of the ancestors, is to build our identities.

That's how I got my name, you know. The Bonny scot, see?

You never realise how much of your background is sewn into the lining of your clothes.

If you forget your history, you forget who you are.

We should not ignore or isolate our roots, no matter where we stay.

I feel I have a responsibility to carry out the immigrant story, since it's one that I hold very dear to my heart, since my story is similar in a lot of ways.

History is very much bound up in family experience.

My roots go back to West Africa, but my last name is Kirby, which is not an African name.

One of the biggest things that I took from playing Kunta Kinte was where his strength came from in knowing where he was from.

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage- to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.

Well, I'm Czech, but Polish, Czech, no matter, it's my name.

An exotic birthplace on its own is not informative of anything.

You don't stumble upon your heritage. It's there, just waiting to be explored and shared.

Some of what I am doing when I am researching is looking for things people in my family have done and finding out what those things mean, why they did those things and seeing how I fit into them.

I discovered that there is Indian blood in my ancestry on my father's side - a fact that had not been talked about in my family. No wonder I've often been cast in exotic roles - Indian princesses, Russian revolutionaries, Algerians, Gypsies and Greeks.

My great grandparents are Scottish, and I have this very tenuous connection which I try and bump up whenever I can, because I'd much rather be Scottish than English.

My parents have always been very concerned of making sure we know who we are and where we come from. I have to give them credit for that. Knowing your roots is quite important.

Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.

What I said to my family is, 'Our history is our own. Let people write what they want, we know who we are.'

A people without a history is like the wind over buffalo grass.

I am not myself, I am the result of all my ancestors.