Quotes About Identity

I've got Disney blood running through my veins.

If America is an idea, which it is - we're not a nation of ethnic groups that say we're Americans because we have American blood; we have the blood of every nation in our veins - and there's something really beautiful about that, but it means that we are an idea and that we all have to buy into this idea.

I've got Argentinian blood running through my veins, and I've always wanted to wear the shirt of my country.

Poles and Jews have been living on this land together for almost 1,000 years. Who can tell how much Jewish blood is in their veins? Nobody knows, so to talk about how to recognize if someone is Jewish is ridiculous.

Though I adored Delhi, Mumbai was in my veins and I felt connected to this city and had to come back.

People ask me 'Are you copying your dad?' It is in my blood. I have got royal blood coursing through my veins. I can't help myself doing what my father did.

I'm always going to be a Celtic no matter what. It's always going to be in my veins. Once you live there and play for that team and win a championship, it doesn't matter where you go.

I don't need no Tony Robbins. I don't need no chi. I've got the blood of Jesus Christ flowing in my veins.

It's very hard to grow up in the African American church and for music to not be in your veins. It's just part of the fabric of who we are as people, especially black musicians.

When I was 13, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground made more sense to me than anything else.

One girl used to call me Brownie and tell me to go back to my own country. At lunch, I'd get a bag of chips from the vending machine and eat it in the storage room so I wouldn't have to see her.

After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.

There's nothing more exciting for an actor than a chance to lose, to be someone who has lost - especially if it's someone who starts off with a veneer of control. To be broken is wonderful.

If being open and honest with my customers is naive then it's fine with me. CEOs who hide behind that all-seeing, all-knowing veneer are playing a game anyway, it's not real. I am quite happy to be seen for who I am.

It's stupid, just because I was born with a French passport, I have the right to travel all around the world, but if I was born in Mali, or Venezuela or Bolivia I couldn't.

My father came from Germany. My mom came from Venezuela. My father's culturally German, but his father was Japanese. I was raised in New York and spent two years in Rio. My parents met at the University of Southern Mississippi, and they had me there, and then we moved to New York. I'm not very familiar with Mississippi.

I knew that I would have to leave Venezuela in order to figure out who I was.

My father is Spanish, and he went to Venezuela looking for a job. He was 20 something, and he fell in love with a Venezuelan girl. He owns a company there, producing iron and bronze.

For me, Venezuela is very important, not just because it's a place I go to conduct, but because my family is there - my wife, my parents and my musical family.

Don't ever insult a Chicano about being a Chicano because then all the other Chicanos will be on you with a vengeance. They will even fight each to be first in line to support you.

Batman. I like the idea that if I had enough money, time, and vengeance, I could become him.

I don't like the idea that one hotel could be better than another. In any city, I try to find a hotel that has the identity of that place - Claridge's in London, the Danieli or Cipriani in Venice. In New York, I stay at the Mercer Hotel; it is so much in the character of SoHo.

Italy will never be a normal country. Because Italy is Italy. If we were a normal country, we wouldn't have Rome. We wouldn't have Florence. We wouldn't have the marvel that is Venice.

My puppets are far more liberated than I am. Ventriloquism is a useful way of expressing myself.