Quotes About Heritage

Growing up in an Italian family, we used our body to convey a message.

Edinburgh used to be a haughty city.

I came from a tough neighborhood. I used to be a 'dirty Greek.'

I used to help my granddaddy make sausage. He would mix it up in a cleaned-out washtub with his hands, no gloves. Man, if we did anything like that today, they would jack the jail up and throw us under it.

I grew up in Birmingham, where they made useful things and made them well.

Sure, Tod's makes shoes and bags. But we make them using leather, which is a living substance to me. And behind each shoe and bag, which in itself may be attractive and useful and comfortable to carry and wear, there is this Italian spirit, this Italian dream.

Considered now as a possession, one may define culture as the residuum of a large body of useless knowledge that has been well and truly forgotten.

What appeals to me? There are things, points of view, uses of the language, habits of dress, ways of thought and believing that came to me from my grandparents and came to them from theirs. Things that are of good use in any situation, no matter what the future may hold.

I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to historical events, so to get the chance to research our family history using our DNA was too good an opportunity to pass up.

One of the brilliant things about Britain is the way you've managed to save old things but to keep using them - that they've not just become museums the way they do in the United States.

Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here.

When I was 6, I learned where I came from, which was one step removed from the usual circumstances. I was adopted.

The San Gabriel monument expands our natural heritage, but there is more in need of safeguarding - extraordinary places like Utah's Greater Canyonlands.

I was born and raised in southern Utah.

In Northern Ireland, I truly, effortlessly, knew who I was. I knew where I belonged. I felt completely and utterly secure.

Kunta Kinte is NOT an American, and he utterly rejects that idea at every turn.

During my childhood, my father, a Southern Baptist minister, and my mother, a teacher, made sure I took educational trips to cities such as Washington, D.C., Williamsburg, Va., Philadelphia, and Boston to learn about America's history.

My great grandfather emigrated from Italy, and my grandfather worked in a steel mill and was able to raise kids and have a family and go on vacation.

While my brother Sultan and I studied in England, my mother Naseem Banu would take us for a holiday to Europe in our vacations which began sometime in July and from there, she would always bring us to India without fail. She was insistent that we never lose track of our Indian values.

I'm a Jew. I'm fascinated by our culture and our history, by what made us the people we are. It influences every breath I take. It informs and guides me. Without it, I'd just be a vacuum.

My knowledge of my ancestry, like a lot of black people not living in Africa today, is very vague.

I am from a very vague caste. I don't belong to any of the four. I am kayastha. They are well read, largely clerks so they get treated respectfully.

Since, in the best Southern tradition, I was named Edmund Valentine White III, sometimes when people look up my books on Amazon they find 'Chocolate Drops from the South' by my grandfather.

You can hear the Celtic heartbeat all over Europe and America, from Bing Crosby to Jack White, from the Smiths to My Bloody Valentine, from House of Pain to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.