Cultural Escape Quotes

My grandmother ... came here, not only like so many others because of the streets 'being paved with gold' and all, but because she wanted to leave the place where the streets were paved with people who had not gone to America.

When you live in a small town in the Ukraine, you definitely want to go to Paris.

America is not so much a country as it is an idea, and that must be why so many people are drawn to it, the idea of it, the idea that you might be free of your past, free of the traditions that kept you in your own traditions - that is the idea of it: freedom from your very own self.

I don't have like whatever, so I'm just like, "Oh man, I'm just going to try to stay out of most people's way and get a taco and enjoy myself as much as I can," because it's such a beautiful town. Beautiful weather. I called my dad that day to tell him what was going on with my passport and he was like, "Yeah it snowed four inches today. It's ten degrees outside." I'm just like, "Cool. I'm glad I'm in Austin, no matter what."

When I discovered that I could tune into American radio stations after dark, this was the hippest thing to me. It sort of saved my life.

I don't think I would be a writer if I had stayed in Chile. I would be trapped in the chores, in the family, in the person that people expected me to be.

Kansas is very religious, very Republican, and very straight-laced. I needed to get away from that.

Adventurous reading allows one to escape a little from the provincialities of one's home culture and the blinders of one's narrow self.

Even the pallid daughters of Albion forget for a moment their Pre-Raphaelite poses by burying themselves in the sonorous sortilege of the Antilles.

You have to find a way - and thankfully for me, it's been music - to separate yourself from the racial identity. It's not easy, and I continue to work, God bless, and I'm really, truly appreciative of it.