Quotes About Culture

The older I get, I'm really reminded how important the arts are to our wellbeing as a society.

I don't look at our society today too much. My focus is still in the past, and part of the reason is because what I do - the wellspring of art, or what I do - l get from the blues. So I listen to the music of a particular period that I'm working on, and I think inside the music is clues to what is happening with the people.

My initial impression of the Welsh was that they were grumpier than I was!

Bowen is a Welsh name and the family background is more rugby than football, but we're English through and through.

All my friends are Welsh, I speak Welsh, and I feel very Welsh.

We moved to America when I was young, but we were always very Welsh in our home. The humor, food, traditions. Very Welsh.

I'm Welsh. We didn't do 'Peter Pan.' We have far more ancient legends to be put to sleep with.

You think the Welsh are friendly, but the Irish are fabulous.

At home I can become lazy and if a Welsh word is really long, I just replace it with English.

To be honest, I think that I am a bit of a singer, coming from Wales; being Welsh, we are all very proud of our singing heritage.

When you ask your white friends what their cultural heritage is, they don't just say white. They give you a math equation. 'Well, I'm a third German and a fourth Irish and one-sixteenth Welsh and one-fortieth Native American for college applications.'

I honestly expected me learning Welsh to be met with a certain amount of cynicism, even outright hostility from some. But that hasn't happened.

Obviously Gwilym is a very Welsh name! My father is from Maesteg, and my mother's from Abergavenny.

I always speak Welsh to my family.

Welsh women aren't the most tactile unless they're your relatives. And then you don't want them to be.

I think most of the world would like to be Scottish. All the Americans who come here never look for English blood or Welsh, only for Scottish and Irish. It's understandable. The Scots effectively created the face of the modern world: the railways, the bridges, the tunnels.

I think now, more than anytime I can remember, bands are sounding pretty similar whether they're English or American, from Manchester or London... or Leeds or Welsh or Irish.

Everyone I know is fervently proud to be Welsh but you try not to be preachy about it. It's difficult at times. But when I go home to north Wales, or to somewhere I've never been in south Wales, I still feel at home because I'm in Wales. It's hard to explain.

There are hundreds of thousands of Scots who acknowledge English, Irish or Welsh parts of their very being. Lives and destinies are similarly intertwined in Catalonia and Spain, in Ukraine and Russia.

My Welsh grandmother Mair didn't meet my grandfather until she was 28, quite old to be unmarried in the early '40s.

I regret not paying a bit more attention to Welsh lessons at school. My Welsh is pretty ropey, as back at my school, people didn't take Welsh lessons seriously. My dad can speak it, so I wish he'd taught me some growing up.

So many different countries have got their version of what Merlin is: the Scottish say he Scottish, the Welsh say he's Welsh, the French say he's French.

John Hartson, he speaks fluent Welsh and has the tattoos all over him to prove his Welshness. But in my own world, no one is more Welsh than myself.

Growing up in Wales, there was a lot of fervour about being Welsh. But the more that I travelled, I realised that people aren't always interested in where you're from, but who you are.