Quotes About Heritage

I was raised by my father, who was a singer, songwriter, guitarist, and bass player. His brothers all did the same thing, so I was kind of always raised around the music.

I'm an American songwriter, and I write from a very American perspective, and so did the records I grew up listening to.

I grew up with singers. My father's mother sang opera. My dad was a big band singer. I can't remember a time there wasn't music in the house, so I grew up listening to great songwriters - George Gershwin, Cole Porter - and my grandma was playing opera for me before I was 3.

Cooking has always sort of been my way to soothe the soul, if you will. I grew up around my great-great-grandmother cooking, and that's eventually where I learned a lot of things. So food has always been used to ease and comfort.

In following their line through, and those of Plantagenet and Tudor, there is but little to soothe the mind.

British people have a really sophisticated sense of humour, because we're exposed to much more than Europeans and Americans, not least in our literary heritage.

My grandfather was actually a doo-wop singer in Panama. They were called The Dominos. He was the high soprano voice.

I'm sorry if you're partly black you're partly black. You're not fully black.

I really feel sorry for kids who aren't interested in history - recent history, either, because it is this that made us what we are.

I think the genetics of being Irish are that you sort of prefer when it's rainy and cloudy. It's just genetic.

I grew up in Michigan, in the Detroit area, so cars are sort of in my DNA.

My grandparents bowed to the Americans and sought to learn from them. My parents sought to be them.

I never sought nor gained personal benefit in school or job applications based on my heritage.

For Jews, the paradigmatic convert is the biblical Ruth, who sought not only a new relationship with God but also a new nationality.

I was born in the Land of Israel, the son of pioneers - people who tilled the land and sought no fights - who did not come to Israel to dispossess its residents.

We forget that the soul has its own ancestors.

The most ironic thing is my grandfather has his masters in music composition; he was a jazz composer. My dad was a musician, too. He played more, like, soul music.

I believe in the old, because it shows us where we come from - where our souls have risen from. And I believe in the new, because it gives us the opportunity to create who we are becoming.

The luckiest person in the world is somebody who is born into a small, shabby-genteel town on a major railway connection with 24,000 souls and a bird sanctuary and whose grandfather owns a farm and whose father owns a business -whose family is mildly prosperous but not rich, which means you can leave the town.

It doesn't sound too good to say I am the son of a landowner, so let us rather say I am the grandson of exploited Galician peasants.

That Mississippi sound, that Delta sound is in them old records. You can hear it all the way through.

I'm three quarters Scottish, but I sound English. I don't really see British as a race.

My grandmother on my father's side, a nightclub singer, was a Jewish refugee from Prussia who ended up in Jerusalem, where she met my grandfather - a British army officer. I remember as a child having bowls of chicken soup made by her. There were lots of interesting components, like feet and necks.

The Midwest is a musical melting pot and the source and birthplace of several musical genres.