Richard Flanagan Quotes

I come from a small village.

I've known where my heritage is from all along.

I have never found out that there was in my family an artist or anyone interested in the arts or sciences, and I have never been sufficiently interested in my 'family tree' to bother. My father and mother had come to America on one of those great waves of immigration that followed persecution and pogroms in Czarist Russia and Poland.

In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.

My family is Anglo-Indian, and of the four children, I'm the only one who wasn't born in India.

I have a sense that many Americans, especially those like me with European or foreign parents, feel they have to invent their families just as they have to invent themselves.

Sweden is the home of my ancestors, and I have reserved a special place in my heart for Sweden.

I grew up in a very small town which is remote even by Indian standards. I always dreamed of the world.

My family immigrated when I was 3, and our predecessors inhabited the Korean Peninsula for as long as can be recalled.

My parents have always been very concerned of making sure we know who we are and where we come from. I have to give them credit for that. Knowing your roots is quite important.

I come from a family of farmers on both sides of my family.

I am the son of poor peasants who came at a very young age to live in Algeria. I only recently saw the place where they were born, near the city of Marrakech.

What I said to my family is, 'Our history is our own. Let people write what they want, we know who we are.'

All of our ancestors came from somewhere.

I'd love to meet my ancestors. I'd love to be able to speak to them.

My dad grew up really poor in Mississippi. I paid attention to that because I thought that's a healthier thing to pay attention to than, like, some statue of a great-great-great grandfather who has no connection to my life.

Part of my whole project from the beginning was to make an absent world present for my parents, which was India.

My grandparents were always farmers.

I come from a village, Changa Bangyaal. It is a very beautiful village. I am from a poor family. Right from the beginning, I always had a great deal of love for cricket.

My dad had a dream of living in an Irish castle, even when we were in Argentina, and in 1960 he found a place without any heat or running water. We had no money, so it was tough.

I ended up living on Crete for eight months. I picked olives and did house painting and got broke.

My mom had to be resourceful. She grew up dirt poor in rural Louisiana.

I got family in the U.K. on my dad's side of the family. My grandfather's brother moved to the U.K. from Jamaica. It's a pretty big family I'll have there.

I have Spanish ancestry and, indeed, speak the language, up to a point.

Be very proud of your name and where you come from. It's so important. Say it loud and clear for everybody to hear.