Quotes About Culture

Americanah; Ayad Akhtar, American Dervish; Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents; Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street; Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Teju Cole, Open City; William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; Nell Freudenberger, The Newlyweds; Cristina García, Dreaming in Cuban and King of Cuba; Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker.

Contigo la milpa es rancho y el atole champurrado.

Just trying to blend in. That's the way of the world." "Well, that's the way of America, at least," my mom said.

And they spoke so fast!

Pátzcuaro and in the shops that catered to them, and we couldn't read the signs above the storefronts as we passed them, so we peered in every window along the way to see what was inside.

But my dad had argued that he didn't know the language of cars. To him, everything had its own language—the language of breakfast, the language of business, the language of politics, and on and on. In Spanish he knew all the languages, but for as long as he'd been speaking English, he believed he knew it only in certain realms.

Latin life is rich with warmth, family values and history. I want to bring that beauty into American homes.

How often today might Christians think they stand for "true" Christianity when what they stand for is a secular tradition-what cultural critic Raymond Williams would call a "selective tradition" (chapter five)-that has little to do with the kingdom of God?

Christians are called to love the whole world, which includes the cultures in which we are embedded. For only by loving culture can we become effective communicators within it.

Wealth, status, and power have become in our culture all too powerful symbols of happiness. ... And we assume that if only we could acquire some of those same symbols, we would be nuch happier.

The important question to ask is why these bodies are allowed to exist. If a country such as Spain allowed a repressive body like the Inquisition to exist for four hundred years, it is not because the Inquisition forced itself on the Spanish nation. It is because the Spaniards allowed it to exist.

Eighty percent of all cultures are the same, it is the 20% that make a culture unique and slam dunks the brand promise to the customer.

Some nonproductive cultures are starving for a vision or central focus; others are wasting the energy of their people by regularly changing and manipulating the direction of their focus. Most contemporary companies are suffering from an assault on their basic expectations. Like the desk clerk, we have collectively learned not to trust and have developed a kind of shared helplessness.

I love coming home to Melbourne. The first thing I do is have a coffee. It's just so much better here than anywhere else. It's better than in Italy and I travel a lot. I crave it.

The authenticity of any new society is built on the foundation of the ethics of that revolution.

Seashells were money before coin, jewelry before gems, art before canvas.

Display in a foreign culture is not a foreign concept, and anyone who has ever traveled abroad will recollect, if they are honest, their status as an ephemeral concubine, with a global passport to seduction and a license to transgress. All the fleeting love affairs that are as much a part of visits to far-off lands as baggage tags and travel-size shampoo bottles--- isn't this proof enough that we all fall into the delightful trap of exoticising and commodifying ourselves in foreign places?

the very least one requires for civilisation to survive is an adequate supply of sound wines.

Four kids in T-shirts and jeans jam on a powwow stage. They're grinning, bouncing, fully engaged with their music, each other, and the relaxed crowd. I'm splitting fry bread with a cousin as we cheer on the band, and across the tent, a young girl reading a paperback catches my eye. In that moment, I wish for more characters like those kids in the pages of children's books. This anthology is a fulfillment of that wish.

We specialize in story-- story is what defines us, what brings people together

Canadians are cold so much of the time that many of them leave instructions to be cremated.

In a school where everyone is famous or rich or whatever, you have a culture, 'What does your dad do?' 'What does your mom do?'

If we blow into the narrow end of the shofar, we will be heard far. But if we choose to be Mankind rather than Jewish and blow into the wider part, we will not be heard at all; for us America will have been in vain.

The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence, -- LUXURY, scepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.