227 Quotes About Heritage

People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off. ... We are born with our heads turned back, but my mother says we have to face into the future now. You have to earn your own innocence, she says. You have to grow up and become innocent.

We believed in our grandmother’s cooking more fervently than we believed in God. Her culinary prowess was one of our family’s primal stories, like the cunning of the grandfather I never met, or the single fight of my parents’ marriage. We clung to those stories and depended on them to define us. We were the family that chose its battles wisely, and used wit to get out of binds, and loved the food of our matriarch.

Character makes the person, not pedigree and tradition.

The future is our present for the next generation. It's our duty and our total responsibility to leave a good deed from our gifts. The way we live our present will lead to a good gift or the worst of nightmares for generations to come

Giving your children a skill is more valuable than giving them your savings.

I hold that a strongly marked personality can influence descendants for generations.

The thing is, I never had a friend like Sohrab before. One who understood me without even trying. Who knew what it was like to be stuck on the outside because of one little thing that set you apart.

My affinity for German extended beyond language. I felt Germany in my very bones. This was strange and difficult to explain. I can only describe it like a long-lost memory of a place I had not yet visited.

When I reflect on the legacies left behind from my childhood, I am indebted to acknowledge the role my mother, grandmother, and godmothers played in my spiritual formation and personal development.