Quotes About Origins

I liked the idea of being from 'somewhere else.' I do think that's inherited. My father never had a fixed sense of where home was, and for my sister and me, it is much easier not to belong than to belong.

So many people are of mixed heritage; everyone is from somewhere else.

The biggest lesson to me is that I got the music from somewhere else - the notes, the music my parents listened to, and the stuff I listened to at every age. All of that inspired the music that I made.

My success? Being born the son of Moses Annenberg.

I am not ashamed to say that I am the son of a washerwoman.

I was born in Washington, D.C., on February 19, 1941, the eldest of four sons.

I'm a product of the different - whether it be institutional racialism, whether it might be growing up in a low-income area, whether it might be, you know, coming from my mother, my father. I'm a totally different person from my mother and father, but once again I'm from them. We all have our different souls, but I'm from them.

It doesn't sound too good to say I am the son of a landowner, so let us rather say I am the grandson of exploited Galician peasants.

Originally, what we call rock 'n' roll was nothing more than an attempt of very bad white performers to sound like black rhythm-and-blues performers. They did their best to emulate, they did their best to paraphrase. And that started what later became rock 'n' roll.

You boil down your influences to a soup, and it all informs you.

Ideas, like large rivers, never have just one source.

We need to read history from the source.

When people say Jerry Lee Lewis invented rock n' roll, they forget Little Richard. People talk about Elvis Presley and forget he was singing black music. I don't blame Elvis. It was the music business figuring it could make more money from this music if it weren't presented from the original source.

I'm not sure I should reveal the sources of my clothes.

The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.

I feel no bond with South Africa, which is curious, since South Africa is where I was born.

I was born in South Africa and lived there until I was 19.

Mom came from what has been called the poorest place in America - Lake Providence, Louisiana. She was born on the south side of the Mississippi which was mainly African American and even poorer than the rest.

I'm most comfortable with the Southern dialects, really. It's easy, for example, for me to do Irish because we've got Irish heritage where I come from.

My profession is about as far away from growing up in southern Illinois as you can get.

Even with the fact that I grew up in North Carolina, 'Jim Rash' just screams 'Southern boy.'

I'm descended from southern slaves, and I'm descended on my mother's side from northern European Protestant immigrants.

I'm sort of a Southerner because those are my roots, but my parents are from Iowa.

I'm from a really little town called Quincy, five hours southwest of Chicago.