Quotes About Culture

In college in the late sixties, I read almost exclusively male writers, usually dead, from England and the rest of Europe. They were very far removed from my daily life, and though I loved them, none of them reflected my experience. I must have subconsciously surmised that writing was not within my ken. It never occurred to me to write, though I secretly wanted to marry a poet.

For thousands of years

Well, right now, I'm very fascinated with 1920s Berlin. I mean, probably the more interesting thing would be to go to the beginning of civilization or precivilization - like polytheistic times. It would be interesting to see what came before modern religion and culture - what circumstances created the environment or the need for it.

You know, I get much more Jewish in Israel because I like the way that religion is done there.

She decided that day to study Russian, the language of violence, terror, and absurdity. She knew she would never be bored.

National identity is, of course, historically constructed; but it is nevertheless symbolized by a flag and an anthem, materialized by administrative acts and by material boundaries, the object of emotional projections that make people speak, make them act and even, sometimes, fight.

No, no," Arnie says. "Fondle--fondle is to touch. Everything sounds Yiddish to you. Far-fetched, far-flung..." "Farflung is Yiddish." "No," Arnie says, "it's not.

Custer wrote, "I often think I would greatly prefer to cast my lot among those of my people adhered to the free open plains rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation, there to be the recipient of the blessed benefits of civilization, with its vices thrown in without stint or measure.

Words form the sinew and muscle that hold societies upright, he argued. Consider the Koran, the Bible, the American Constitution, but also letters from fathers to sons, last wills, blessings, curses. Thousands upon thousands of words infused with the full spectrum of emotions fill in the nooks and corners of human life.

A novelist can't be without a kimono and pen!(Shigure)

It's because you're like that that you're still a virgin, you know.

It's the standard-issue Indian male syndrome. Mothers and sisters on a pedestal on the one hand, and loose women and prostitutes below the boot on the other. And me, a good Marathi girl like his sisters, consorting with all of you wastrels and worse. Too confusing for him.

for societies are built as much on what people choose to forget as what they remember

Never have so many been schooled so much as to their rights while, at the same time, being taught that there are no behavioral wrongs. If we can but realize that Satan is selfishness at the end of its journey, then we can see where our selfish society is headed.

Well, if there is a spectrum between ethnic and civic forms of nationalism, which is a rather schematic way of looking at it, all nationalism contains elements of both, but Scotland is very far on the civic end of the spectrum. That is partly because nobody has ever been stupid enough to say that Scotland is an ethnicity in a genetic sense. A kingdom of Scotland existed long before anybody talked of a Scottish people. So that is one thing we have been spared.

Who invented political tolerance? The English invented it, it's something which has taken roots with some difficulty in Scottish politics.

The disjuncture from politics, on the other hand, springs from something which concerns all these poets: the shattered nature of Scottish consciousness, which isn't a low flat floor of peasant culture on which all stand together but a wild junk-yard of high culture fragments, English imports, oral traditions of 'the Scots commons' and proletarian 'socialist realism' from the thirties.

Our home villages with the hills, mountains and forests, the lakes and ponds, rivers and streams, waterfall and fjords. The smell of new hay in summer, of birches in spring, of the sea, and the big forest, and even the biting winter cold. Everything . . . Norwegian songs and music and so much, much more. That's our Fatherland and that's what we have to struggle to get back.

Consider this: Every day in America more people get their evening news from Entertainment Tonight, an insipid syndicated television show covering celebrity news, than from CBS, NBC, and ABC combined.

That sounded a lot more appetizing than my aging cynicism, complete lack of interest in others, and lifetime of enthusiastic immersion in a culture that encourages you to look out for number one. Clearly, my best self was miles down the road.

You can't change laws without first changing human nature.' -Nurse Greta You can't change human nature without first changing the law.' -Nurse Yvonne

That constitutionally stipulated deadline of January 1, 1808, is, from our perspective, one of the most important dates in American history, signaling as it does the transformation of the United States slavery industry. For this reason, 1808 is also an essential date for understanding the making of African American culture. Kidnapped Africans had been arriving for almost two hundred years, repeatedly re-Africanizing American culture. No longer. The child was separated from the ancestors.

For this reason, 1808 is also an essential date for understanding the making of African American culture. Kidnapped Africans had been arriving for almost two hundred years, repeatedly re-Africanizing American culture. No longer.

it is not the first language that is all-important, but which language captures the adolescent's imagination when he or she first discovers literature.