Mal Peet Quotes

Although I write to entertain, and try to keep my work free of didacticism, I do have a rather passionate belief in our need to be connected to - and to learn from - history.

An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.

We've got to know our history. We have to be able to bring our children to a place that they can be proud of.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.

I think we really forget how connected we are to the past.

A generation without history is a generation that not only loses a nation's memory but loses a sense of what it's like to be inside a human skin.

The past could liberate or imprison - it creates a nation's character, provides the nourishment or the poison a people imbibe in their very marrow.

No people can live in the past - not even in its own past. But if it no longer has a link with its history, it must of necessity perish. Persia, crowded with hardship and glory, ordeals and hopes. With the help of the Almighty, the lessons of the past constitute the best guide for the citizens of the future.

Without understanding your history, you can't get a perspective about the present.

One should live with history round one.

My generation knew pretty well what happened 50 years before our birth. Now I follow all the quiz programs because they are a paramount example of the span of memory of the young generation - they are able to remember everything that happened in their life but not before.

I think the city is the strongest social memory organ of humanity.

Today, we are fortunate that the historical novel has reached such extraordinary heights of technical mastery. The ability of society to connect with the past holds out the greatest hope for it being able to embrace the future.

Everyone's past is locked up in their recipes - the past of an individual and the past of a nation as well.

If I don't make heritage visible and the strength of mother tongue important for my grandchildren, it scares me that they might say in 20 years from now, 'Well, it is rumoured that we used to be Africans long ago.' And in many urban areas, it's already happening.

Almost any American can connect on some level to a family background of having come across some ocean. They say, 'My great-grandparents came from wherever... this is why we have this last name, why we do this thing at Christmas.' All the details get watered down but don't quite disappear.

I like places that have history in the sense of - you feel responsible to it.

Myths give us our sense of personal identity, answering the question, 'Who am I?'

The only way we'll know where we're going is to look at the past and to remember who we were through ceremonies and rituals.

I tend to believe that film can try to save what still can be saved, in terms of our histories, our memories. Because a lot of things are disappearing very quickly, things are changing. We are living in very quick times, and we have a new generation who basically know nothing about events 30 years ago.

If you forget your history, you forget who you are.

As little boys, my brother and I used to spend hours with my grandmother, asking her about the details of how she came to America. She could only give us a smattering of details, but they all found their way into our collective imagination, eventually becoming a part of our own cultural identity and connection to the past.

I grew up in a very cultural household, but part of our culture is that we don't really take photos.

I haven't studied history - I couldn't give a discourse in medieval literature - but I am a personal historian, and I do a lot to take in the histories of the people around me.

I've danced hula since I was 5. My mom danced hula as well. It's been in my family from far back and really connected me to my ancestors.