Quotes About Heritage

Sometimes it is good to think of old things, old ways, and do the old stories when there is nothing to do but wait.

When he mentioned family, I could only think of my father, my real father, the Long Island janitor with the impenetrable accent and true-to-life smells. My mind returned away from what Joshie was saying and I pondered my father's humiliation. The humiliation of growing up a Jew in the Soviet Union, of cleaning piss-stained bathrooms in the States, of worshipping a country that would collapse as simply and inelegantly as the one he had abandoned.

Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.

I am scared of the photo studio. I am scared of the telephone. Scared of anything outside our apartment. Scared of the people in their big fur hats. Scared of the snow. Scared of the cold. Scared of the heat. Scared of the ceiling fan at which I would point one tragic finger and start weeping. Scared of any height higher than my sickbed. Scared of Uncle Electric Current. Why was I so scared of everything? I ask my mother nearly forty years later. Because you were born a Jewish person, she says.

Needless to say, she grew up with the parents Senderovsky could only dream of, the kind that did not watch the state television of their adopted land with its screaming chyrons and grim blond hosts and unimaginative, murderous lies. Masha loved her parents, loved the language of her parents, and wanted Natasha to know the "gift" of her country's culture. But Senderovsky, despite his Petrogradsky affectations, was still the man from Elektrosila.

In her bones, this may still be her country. But she will not touch it with her hands the way I do, trying to lyricize the filth and the decay.

This is the superhumanity of the immigrant, but woe be to the all-too-human offspring living in the shadow of such strength.

Virginia proper, a series of low Confederate fields bracketing the highway.

We are, after all, an animal that was brought into being on this biosphere by these processes of sun and water and lead. And if we depart too far from them, we're departing too far from the mother, from our heritage.

Ricordare che un tempo vivevamo in certi luoghi fa parte della nostra auto-riscoperta attuale. Fornisce radici a ciò che definiamo essere umani (etimologicamente qualcosa come essere radicati nella terra).

What has been done, thought, written, or spoken is not culture; culture is only that fraction which is remembered.

Comtesse de Chagny, nee de Moerogis de La Martyniere

It was as if she had more than learned it off by heart. Though. it was as if their memory, the memory of all the Corregidora women, was her memory too, as strong with her as her own private memory, or almost as strong. But now she was Mama again.

My great-grandmama told my grandma the part she lived through that my grandma didn't live through and my grandma told my mama what they both didn't live through and my mama told me.

Christians—who have no patience with Darwinistic materialism—often sound as progressive as the most ardent evolutionist. They look for "new" theologies, "new" ways of worship, and "new" music, being quite willing to toss out their entire "old-fashioned" Christian heritage.

What is China but a people and their stories?

You have to know your past if you want to create a future.

A legend, a lie, and a likelihood make a tradition'?

Every gene in every human body has passed through thousands of penises over thousands of generations of human evolution. Equally, every gene has passed down through thousands of eggs inside female ancestors who chose to copulate with particular males. In sexually reproducing species, copulation is the genetic gateway from one generation to the next, which is what makes it so important evolutionarily, physically, and psychologically.

The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.

how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother?

Ah!" said the grocer, "I thought I knew his features. He takes after his mother's family; she was a Dodson. He's a fine, straight youth; what's he been brought up to?" "Oh! to turn up his nose at his father's customers, and be a fine gentleman,–not much else, I think.