Quotes About Origins

Of course, I have been influenced by my Punjabi and Hariyanvi roots.

How can I tell if I was born hating coconut or developed a hatred of coconut because my father distrusted it as an ingredient?

When you don't inherit an identity you have to define it on your own.

History is hereditary only in this way: we, all of us, inherit everything, and then we choose what to cherish, what to disavow, and what to do next, which is why it's worth trying to know where things come from.

I think what you inherit is not real. I haven't inherited anything. What I have is really mine because I made it myself.

I'm an inner city man, born and bred.

You always want to know what happened before you. It's a human instinct to know where you came from and what preceded you.

I don't come from an intellectual family.

Often, we think that things are the way they are because of intelligent design - because somebody super-smart, or some group of academics, came up with the best system ever to do XYZ. Actually, things are often the way they are because of an accident of history.

After all, the Indo-European word cunt was derived from the goddess Kunda or Cunti, and shares the same root as kin and country.

There is no unthreatened, unthreatening conceptual home for the concept of gay origins. We have all the more reason, then, to keep our understanding of gay origin, of gay cultural and material reproduction, plural, multi-capillaried, argus-eyed, respectful, and endlessly cherished.

Initium Adán y Eva. La serpiente partió el espejo en mil pedazos, y la manzana fue la piedra.

Thus men, according to Bossuet, derive nothing from themselves; patriotism, wealth, inventions, husbandry, science—all come to them by the operation of the laws, or by kings. All they have to do is to be passive.

We call each other the Hin-Jews because he's Tamilian, and the Tamils of Southern India came from Ethiopia just as the Hebrews from Palestine came from Ethiopia. The DNA is the same.

The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries

That we have iodine in our thyroid glands proves that our bodies were fashioned from supernova material. The iron in our blood came from the cores of two previous star generations. The Sun gives off a bit of peculiar yellow light from fluorescing sodium vapor, an element inherited from its father, the type O or B blue star.

Three rabbits, two cats, three parakeets, a dove, two parrots, three turkeys, two geese, a canary, and nine ducks at last count were just about what Noah had started with, and he never brought his animals into the house.

Wilderness gave us knowledge. Wilderness made us human. We came from here. Perhaps that is why so many of us feel a strong bond to this land called Serengeti; it is the land of our youth.

Liz Gorman, a fiery redhead, had been one of the founding members of the Raven Brigade.

The idea that you benefit the insulted and injured by reading someone of their own origins rather than reading Shakespeare is one of the oddest illusions ever promoted by or in our schools.

Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry…

Aunty said no, that's where we got our small hands and feet.

Well, Indian-heads—well, they come from the Indians. They're real strong magic, they make you have good luck.

Blood is our only permanent history, and blood history does not admit of revision