Quotes About Tradition

For our first date, I made Ryan Hamburger Helper, which is basically what I grew up on. I make my own version of it now, with macaroni and cheese and hamburger meat. And the kids - it's their favorite dinner.

What I've learned, traveling the country and doing book signings, Mama's biscuits - you know, somebody in Montana's got their version of Mama's biscuits, somebody in California's got their version - so it made me realize that we're not as regionalized as we think we are.

My mother was born in Burma, but my grandfather on her side was Indian-Spanish. So I have this quite exotic mix, which is reflected in my earliest memories, in our Wiltshire country kitchen, of gran, and aunts, cooking spicy stewy, casseroley curries, a version of Indian food with a Burmese twist.

Hockey historians say the handshake dates to English settlers in Canada, who preached an upper-class version of sportsmanship in the 19th century. Soon, tough kids in urban and prairie rinks began imitating imagined dukes and earls of the old country.

I'm a traditionalist with suits. It doesn't need extra pockets, and I don't want headphone jacks in my jacket. I appreciate designers who do different things, but for me, the most basic version of that item is what I want.

I think I tended toward the Russian training because my first teacher taught a version of Vaganova, and it was drilled into me that that was the best system, and also at the time there were a lot of great Russian stars.

I recovered my infant Judaism, but in a reformist version.

The Danish glee: the national version of cheerfulness.

Holy shit," he said. "Oh, my God, holy shit." "Vince," I said, irritated because he had interrupted the first happy thoughts I'd had in days. "In traditional Western culture, we like to separate deity and feces." He

Korea, right, you'd think it was tea, tea, tea. Like China and Japan. But the last emperor of Korea, his name was Sunjong, the nineteen twenties, he loved the West and always had coffee at the palace. He and his father would sit around drinking coffee and talking about world affairs. Word got around and the citizens began to drink coffee. They liked to do what their emperor does. There're more coffee drinkers in Korea than any other Asian country. They even

Observe the Baltimore Irish Catholic in his natural environment, eating soft ice cream and onion rings after a movie.

God bless the Scots and their puritan upbringing

Eton has been known to bend the rules when it comes to members of the aristocracy

The Japanese always arrive bearing a gift,' whispered Anna, 'but under no circumstances should you open it in their presence.

Punctuality is an obsession with the Japanese

when mothers stop kissing their children, and young men start kissing their mothers?

Sourmelina's secret (as Aunt Zo put it): 'Lina was one of those women they named the island after.

All of a sudden America wasn't about hamburgers and hot rods anymore. It was about the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. It was about something that had happened for two minutes four hundred years ago, instead of everything that had happened since. Instead of everything that was happening now!

My grandfather's short employ at the Ford Motor Company marked the only time any Stephanides has ever worked in the automotive industry. Instead of cars, we could become manufacturers of hamburger platters and Greek salads, industrialists of spanakopita and grilled cheese sandwiches, technocrats of rice pudding and banana cream pie. Our assembly line was the grill; our heavy machinery, the soda fountain.

As meninas estavam enormes naqueles vestidos de cerimónia, construídos à volta de uma estrutura de arame. Tinham quilos e quilos de cabelo, bem presos, na cabeça. Embriagadas, beijando-nos, ou a desmaiar nas cadeiras, estavam destinadas ao ensino superior, aos maridos, à educação dos filhos, à infelicidade que dificilmente se percebia - enfim, à vida.

It was the custom in those days for passengers leaving for America to bring balls of yarn on deck. Relatives on the pier held the loose ends. As the Giulia blew its horn and moved away from the dock, a few hundred strings of yarn stretched across the water.

That was the ideal: to remain dutiful to a preservationist ethos while not depriving yourself of modern creature comforts.

Within the substandard construction of the Charlevoix church, literally upon a shaky foundation, I was baptized into the Orthodox faith; a faith that had existed long before Protestantism had anything to protest and before Catholicism called itself catholic; a faith that stretched back to the beginnings of Christianity, when it was Greek and not Latin, and which, without an Aquinas to reify it, had remained shrouded in the smoke of tradition and mystery whence it began.

You used to be able to tell a person's nationality by the face. Immigration ended that. Next you discerned nationality via the footwear. Globalization ended that. Those Finnish seal puppies, those German flounders—you don't see them much anymore. Only Nikes, on Basque, on Dutch, on Siberian feet.