Embracing Heritage Quotes

The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

I come from the Midwest, from the suburbs - growing up hanging out at the mall and looking at the corn fields across the street. I kind of was embarrassed by it for a long time. Then I decided, 'Hey, if everyone else can embrace their homeland and where they're from, I can do the same!'

You can't kill the past by denying the past. You can kill it only by making it obsolete. And even in that, you have to find honor in the past. You can't hack off pieces of yourself, and expect them to grow again.

A lot of groups spend their whole cultural and aesthetic identity trying to move away from Africa, which I think is a mistake. One of the reasons I love Cuba and cultures like that is because they're not trying to move away from their African roots, they're trying to embrace them. That's part of the culture.

Sometimes at my performances, I see Peruvian flags in the audience. I've never seen, when an Italian sings, people with Italian flags. But with Peru, it's different: because there are not many famous people, they really celebrate the ones they have.

I am not afraid to play Latin roles - that was a big part of my life.

I went through all these different phases. But it always felt like I was impersonating something, so I went back to some of the music I grew up with, like music from South Africa and the '80s stuff. I stopped suppressing it, and I stopped trying to be cool.

The only diversity in the Brits is with the Americans. I've been saying this for a while: for our country to do good, we need to embrace our country.

In a way, it's taken me 25 years to acknowledge that I am from the West Coast. I was always sort of pretending I was bicoastal or that I really belonged on the East Coast.

No matter what I hear about my parents, about my family, no matter what I read, the fact is that I'm absolutely proud to be a Trump. For a while, I was worried that for my whole life I'd sort of be under my parents' shadow, but it's not a bad shadow to be under.

I come more to Scotland than I ever used to, so I feel more connected to it, more part of the zeitgeist. You know when you realize you have a choice and I'm choosing my homeland. It's funny: when you get older these things creep up to you.

History … liberated me from a past that was no longer relevant. I was ready to explore the American side of my hyphenated psyche. I'm still doing it

I had to get to the point where I just had to embrace carrying the torch for the traditional girls out there. I love representing the traditional black woman.

It's better to embrace your roots than it is to fight it, because then you're just fighting something that you're not going to win. We're like a band of gypsies, and it makes sense.

Sometimes you have to gag on fancy before you can appreciate plain, th' way I see it. For too many years, I ate fancy, I dressed fancy, I talked fancy. A while back, I decided to start talkin' th' way I was raised t' talk, and for th' first time in forty years, I can understand what I'm sayin'.

I'm not into branding - I'm trying to be organic to who I am on every level. I do really connect to being a part of the working class. Those are my roots. My family [consists of] farmers from Portugal, builders, housekeepers and stonemasons.