Quotes About Ancestry

When we had come no one could tell me. We were not that kind of people. We simply lived; we did what was expected of us, what we had seen the previous generation do. We never asked why; we never recorded. We felt in our bones that we were a very old people; but we seemed to have no means of gauging the passing of time. Neither my father nor my grandfather could put dates to their stories. Not because they had forgotten or were confused; the past was simply the past.

Right now, there are far more descendants of the Scottish diaspora scattered around the world than there are living in Scotland.

I'm in a place foreign to me, but there's something about Paris that feels very familiar. I wonder for the first time if a sense of place can be passed down through the blood.

When her last name had still been Voronova

name is precious; it carries inside it a language, a history, a set of traditions, a particular way of looking at the world.

as if hate were an atavism just waiting to resurface.

Quelle sono le nostre madri». La sua voce era aspra. «Noi siamo spade, così ci dicono, e le spade non hanno madre né padre, ma io ne ho avuta una un tempo, e non riesco nemmeno a ricordarne il nome.»

We are not our parents, Gabriel. We do not have to carry the burden of their choices or their sins.

You cannot simply ask whether people look like their demon grandfather!

Our fathers were demons,' Catarina said. 'Our mothers were heroes.

Heritage does not equal destiny.

Don't be ridiculous. Heritage does not equal destiny.

You belong to this Comanche.

Within her grew a child, both tosi tivo and Comanche, the child of the great warrior with indigo eyes and his honey-haired maiden. A child who brought new hope for the People and tomorrow.

You cannot escape where you come from, September. Some part of it remains inside you always, like the slender white heart in the center of the thickest onion.

It's in our blood—we heard their distresses like a rung bell in our bones.

A body can only deliver up the truth its bones know, Its blood, which is its history.

an unbroken line of unrelated people

Writing is a family trade like anything else: you are more entitled to the profession if your ancestors have already set up shop.

Levi, un apellido de los que se murmuran al oído.

Just as the ripples of a stone thrown into a pond will spread further and further away from the source, so the ripples of the disaster in 1948 hit my parents first and then spread to us and to our children long afterwards. Seeing only the ripples, it was easy to confuse the original cause with its effects.

Nadie puede decir cuál habría sido nuestra historia si tanta tribu no hubiese sido aniquilada. Los españoles decían que debían civilizarnos, hacernos abandonar la barbarie. Pero ellos, con barbarie, nos dominaron, nos despoblaron. En pocos años hicieron más sacrificios humanos que nosotros en el tiempo largo que transcurrió desde las primeras festividades.

L'héritage qui t'est venu de ton ancêtre, Il te faut l'acquérir pour le mieux posséder. Conserver sans besoin, c'est se donner un maître Et rien, hors du présent, ne peut nous profiter.

Sir Brian told him in fulsome scatological terms what he could do with his lineage.