Quotes About Heritage

My parents both are physicians, and my grandfathers were both physicians.

I was born in the small city of Hobart in Tasmania, Australia, in 1948. My parents were family physicians. My grandfather and great grandfather on my mother's side were geologists.

All my momma's people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano.

I'm the oldest in my family and do play piano.

Music has always been in my family, but it was mainly keyboards. I learned to play classical piano, but when I first heard the amazing bass guitar of James Jamerson, who played on all the big Motown hits of the '60s and '70s, I knew bass guitar was my instrument.

I'd go over to my grandmother's house, and she'd be playing opera. They loved opera. Not only did they play it on the radio, but they played it on their piano. Everybody learned how to read music and how to play.

My mom, grandma, great-grandma - we're all named Mary, and we all play piano and sing.

I'm a first - I was the first person in my family born in the United States. My mom is from Croatia, and my dad is from Iran. They met at music school in Belgium. I grew up as a pianist. I was really interested in piano and sort of discovered that I was a writer when I was about 13 and started writing.

I basically am the only musician in my family. My aunt plays a little piano, but that's about it. My dad's mother painted and was actually good at it. I do not come from a long line of musicians, though.

I think one of the things that I picked up from Nigeria is the constant pressure to be excellent. Parents drill in this responsibility towards family, but also a responsibility toward making sure your family name is heralded.

I picked a name that was a combination of an island name and a very English name. Havana was one choice and Dominico was another, but I liked the combination of Jamaica Kincaid.

It's a tradition in our family that the girls all be given crazy names, usually picked out of Gothic novels.

It was a difficult decision picking Nigeria over England.

I'm the son of a woman who grew up in Waycross, Georgia, picking cotton.

There are pictures of me in a Dos Caras mask when I was 3 years old.

I look back at my elementary or high school pictures and I always had gel in my hair and a gold chain that I would wear outside my shirt. That's how I was born and raised as an Italian male, and I always considered myself a Guido, anyway.

This is the beauty of Rajasthan; everything is so picturesque.

Whatever you build, you're building for the family - not with an eye toward getting away, but with an eye toward adding to the family pie.

I think 'American Pie' is great.

I'm as American as apple pie.

Dissent is as American as cherry pie.

Wigan is the town I come from. We're all known as pie eaters in Wigan.

Language, identity, place, home: these are all of a piece - just different elements of belonging and not-belonging.