Quotes About Tradition

My music pulls from flamenco plenty; it wouldn't make sense without that genre. I also have a lot of love for flamenco and I'm very happy if I can be an ambassador for it.

What I'm definitely against is the plodding, paint-by-numbers 19th-century-style novel that's still being written today. I just don't understand why you'd read or write that in 2011.

Of course I can change a plug. But my father would not only know how to change a plug, he could have rewired the house, built the back wall. Its a generational thing.

When I made my first film I was 25 years old, and that's pretty rare. Being so young my experience and the thing that I wanted to talk about was teenagehood, plus in France we have that strong tradition of the coming-of-age story being made as your first film.

My daddy had a pocket watch that he wore at all times in court. I gave Greg the watch and showed him how Daddy used to use it.

Among my dad's generation, when you gave another man a pocketknife as a gift, it was a show of respect. I'll still give someone the knife out of my pocket.

More than 700 years ago, the Song Dynasty artist Zheng Sixiao created perhaps the most beautiful image of orchids ever painted, 'Ink Orchid.' And still famous today is a thousand-year-old poem from the Tang Dynasty called 'Orchid and Orange.'

If you sit down to write a limerick, you find yourself straddling two histories: the history of the limerick form itself, which stretches back to at least the 11th century, and your personal history of knowing limericks or poems similar to limericks.

In African-American culture, there's often a family historian, someone who does the genealogy or keeps the family Bible. I became aware that might be one role the poet has.

Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead.

There is a wonderful Hungarian literature, especially in lyric poetry.

It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese.

Alice Oswald. With Hughes and Heaney gone, people are looking around for the best British and Irish poets. Oswald is one of our finest.

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.

I spent the first 16 years of my life in Scotland. My whole family is there. It's in my blood and informs my sense of humour, my point of view, the people I choose to spend time with, everything.

I love the classic marble inlay work of Arga.

I like to do things that are classic.

I'm a huge country fan and am always inspired by classic country.

'Mother India' is a classic that I love.

My father was the classic Puritan. Hold the emotions in check. Keep up appearances.

There are a lot of classical musicians in my family, so I grew up with that being kind of normal.

Classical dance is a growing and ever-evolving art.

It's almost died, classical dance.

Any form of classical music is made for youth.