I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were.
Poverty abides no line drawn by color or culture.
I remember thinking the Nineties were uncool: 'I landed in the generation where nothing happens.'
During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.
The Self of everyone, the Atma of everyone, the transcendental field of reality of everyone, is the same in everyone. Whether the body calls itself an American, German, Indian or Chinese, it doesn't matter.
When you fight something like cancer, you not dealing with a person that looks at where you come from or what's your background or what race you are or what ethnicity or whatever. Whatever your culture is, it doesn't care about that. It doesn't sleep - it doesn't get tired - so if you make it about yourself, you're going to fail every time.
Gypsies at home watching Jerry Falwell on TV, might mean something to you, it ain't nothing to me.
The writer in America isn't part of the culture of this country. He's like a fine dog. People like him around, but he's of no use.
As far as the international industry is concerned, I don't think people care at all where you are from - if the work interests them.
I knew I was Chinese, but growing up, it never occurred to me that that had any particular implication or that it should differentiate me in any way. I thought it was a minor detail, like having red hair.
The avant-garde is now stranded in the past.
The vast majority of all consequences, especially in 21st century America, are completely meaningless bullshit.
The only creature less fashionable in academia than the stereotypical 'dead white male,' is the dead white male on horseback.
