Quotes About Heritage

My dad recently reminded me that my grandfather's cousin was Lefty Frizzell.

I was raised in Oklahoma. I was actually born in Tulsa, but I grew up in a small town on the west side of Oklahoma called Elk City on a farm, where my dad grew up, actually.

My dad is a Deadhead, my mom's a Jewish-American princess from Jersey.

I know exactly where I've come from, I know exactly who my mum and dad are.

My father was Catholic, my mother was Protestant, and because of that I got Christened in both churches, so I've got all these names... but my Dad always called me Mick.

The main thing is that the 'C' is silent, so it kind of starts with a 'Z.' Z-O-O-K-RIE. It's Ukrainian, on my dad's side.

None of my sisters are in the movies, nor are my nieces going to be. That's how Dutt 'sahab,' my dad, brought up the girls in the family, and I am just carrying his thought forward.

Our dad played us a lot of old country songs by The Carter Family and he would sing along to it. I loved listening to him sing.

My dad's half-Lebanese, my mom is full Lebanese. I'm three-quarters Lebanese. Irish-Lebanese.

My mother and dad played the fiddle and the guitar.

Mum doesn't like it when I mention that Dad's a better cook than her. He was born in Spain and spent eight years in Portugal and is exceptional at lots of cuisines.

My mom, dad, grandparents, we all do voices.

I must have been yearning for some Jewish content beyond my genetic makeup because soon after my 21st birthday, I noticed I was no longer dating WASPs.

Death will destroy my body, but my creatures will keep on living ever after, in the years to come.

I'm Irish. I think about death all the time.

It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you. It's what you leave behind you when you go.

Like all artists, I want to cheat death a little and contribute something to the next generation.

There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.

A cold wind blew on the prairie on the day the last buffalo fell. A death wind for my people.

Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?

Noi lasciamo una macchia, lasciamo una traccia, lasciamo la nostra impronta.

You don't have to revere your family, you don't have to revere your country, you don't have to revere where you live, but you have to know you have them, you have to know that you are part of them. Because if you don't, you are just out there on your own and I feel for you.

When Heshie was killed in the war, the only thing people could think to say to my Aunt Clara and my Uncle Hymie, to somehow mitigate the horror, to somehow console them in their grief, was, "At least he didn't leave you with a shikse wife. At least he didn't leave you with goyische children." End of Heshie and his story.

As a family they still flew the flight of the immigrant rocket, the upward, unbroken immigrant trajectory from slave-driven great-grandfather to self-driven grandfather to self-confident, accomplished, independent father to the highest high flier of them all, the fourth-generation child for whom America was to be heaven itself. No wonder he couldn't shut up.