Quotes About Culture

Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden.

And thus it was that I started to wonder why Robert Burns is so important to us. We have other poets, and other writers, and other heroes, yet we do not afford them the veneration that we afford to Robert Burns.

I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.

I'm definitely more influenced by European writers than I am by American writers, there's no doubt about that.

Of course, the way writers think about those things is almost certain to be affected by their own cultural background, and it would be hard to deny that, for whatever reasons, a lot of SF writers come from Anglo or European backgrounds.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.

Today, for a Jew who writes in the German language, it is totally impossible to make a living. In no group do I see as much misery, disappointment, desperation and hopelessness as in Jewish writers who write in German.

Rap music is amazing, it's beautiful. But the problem is the lyrics. The person who writes the lyrics - that's the problem.

Kids are on their keyboards so much, between their smartphones and laptops, no one writes anything anymore. It's atrocious.

I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish.

I have an English identity and a French identity. When I'm in France, I'm more outgoing. And the French part of me cooks, whereas the English part of me writes.

In America, everyone writes but no one reads. Everyone's writing all day long - sending emails, tweets, text messages; they all think they're James Cameron's Avatar, performing in some video game for which they make up the script.

If you read the fables, 'Beowulf,' for example, you will know something about the person who writes them, and I like that. Secondly, they will not be about individuals; they will be about community. Thirdly, they're all about moralizing. Fourthly, the way they express themselves takes its tone from the oral tradition.

Everybody is a regionalist. Tolstoy is a regionalist - one is where one lives, where one writes.

It's problematic being an Arab who writes in Hebrew.

I belong to the Russian language. As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is not oaths from a high platform, but how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

I grew up across the street from, you know, the Villarias, which was a great Mexican family there. In fact, there was three houses right across the street from me. So, day and night, I listened to Mexican music, and I'm sure, you know, my guitar playing, singing, writing, whatever, has a lot of Mexican flavor there, but it comes natural.

Writing about Africa by Africans has been part of my literary apprenticeship, standing alongside works by authors such as Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and Graham Greene as influences.

I am a woman, and I am a Latina. Those are the things that make my writing distinctive. Those are the things that give my writing power.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments, said Frex.

in a people whose moral code is so lax, so little is wrong.