Vetrimaaran Quotes

Although I don't examine myself in this respect, I would say, off the top of my head, that I've come to acknowledge my Czechness more as I get older.

Now that I'm older, I appreciate my culture and I appreciate Spanish. I feel bad I didn't pick up on it earlier.

I really hold on to my culture because it is what made me.

I'm slowly feeling more Chinese and feel I should be more proud of being Chinese and appreciate where I've come from.

I have been aware since my youth that I am a Hebrew through my mother, and that is something that has played a subtle but important role in my development.

It’s very important that all of us who have bicultural roots retain our culture.

Obviously, my Indigenous culture is very special to me.

Chinese people need to be aware of their present and ask, 'What's our culture? What can we bring to the world?' I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Gujarat has a rich culture and in my view every Indian should contribute to highlighting our heritage.

I found a greater identity with my own emotions in the Armenian culture as I grew older, as well as from the beginning, although I didn't know anything about it.

Most of my life I was occupied with American television and American food. My ethnicity was my choice. It still is.

An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.

I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.

I've got to where am in life not because of something I brought to the world but through something I found - the wealth of African culture.

I think there's something really painful about your identity being entirely composed of ghosts. For me, I didn't want to be this kid whose Dominicanness was something caught utterly in the past, is an abstraction, the thing that I write about. Instead I wanted it to be, first and foremost, a thing that I lived.

So we have to be careful because if you don't protect your culture you won't have it for very long.

We've got to map all of our ancient history before it's gone because, let's face it, if we don't have a common heritage to share, something to get excited about, then what are we living for?

People tend to believe that to be modern you have to disengage from your heritage, but it's not true.

In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture.

When the culture is strong, you've got this consistency where black people can grow up in these places with this voice just resonating about our special-ness in the universe. And I always say you're in trouble if you get too far away from that core that grounds you.

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

Well, one hopes that if you're really related to the core of your particular culture, you have profound commitments to it, and that you are aware of how much you can strain it before you do violence to its essential nature.

I have never denied my background or my culture. I have taught my child to embrace her Mexican heritage, to love my first language, Spanish, to learn about Mexican history, music, folk art, food, and even the Mexican candy I grew up with.

You have to work at creating your own culture.

My continent knows more about me than I do myself.