It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

‚Kiss Land‘ is the story after ‚Trilogy‘; it’s pretty much the second chapter of my life. The narrative takes place after my first flight; it’s very foreign, very Asian-inspired. When people ask me, ‚Why Japan?‘ I simply tell them it’s the furthest I’ve ever been from home. It really is a different planet.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

What someone else does or doesn’t do has no effect on me and what I do.

I’ve never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

I just usually go with my own taste. If I like something, and it happens to be against the law, well, then I might have a problem.

There is a level of snobbery and fickleness in L.A.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

It makes sense for Japan to pursue a more independent role in the world, following Latin America and others in freeing itself from U.S. domination.

Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it’s like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can’t really speak on it, because I wasn’t there. I don’t feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.

I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, ‚black feminist‘ does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it’s just… womanish.

Many Tibetans sacrifice their lives.

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot.

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

Britishness is just a way of putting things together and a certain don’t care attitude about clothes. You don’t care, you just do it and it looks great.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.

To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.

I don’t think culture is something you can describe.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

Before I became a film major, I was very heavily into social science, I had done a lot of sociology, anthropology, and I was playing in what I call social psychology, which is sort of an offshoot of anthropology/sociology – looking at a culture as a living organism, why it does what it does.

Consciously or unconsciously most of us adhere to what is expected of our role because we realize our social success depends on this. Some may refuse to play this game, but in the end they are marginalized and forced to play the outsider role, with limited options and decreasing freedom as they get older.

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.

Honolulu is a melting pot.

There are plenty of people who are, I think, completely racist who love hip-hop.

America is just downright mean.

Why does your mind conform? Have you ever asked? Are you aware that you are conforming to a pattern? It doesn’t matter what that pattern is, whether you have established a pattern for yourself or it has been established for you.

At the end of the day, who I really and truly am is a little girl who loved to play the piano.

I often look ridiculous in Japan. There’s really no way to eat in Japan, particularly kaiseki in a traditional ryokan, without offending the Japanese horribly. Every gesture, every movement is just so atrociously wrong, and the more I try, the more hilarious it is.

The Iraqis have become invested in their nationhood.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

I don’t think a lot of people know personally who I am.

I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.

Being a Puerto Rican artist, I support all kinds of projects that are developed on my beautiful island that in some way or another put our Puerto Rican flag up.

The great moments of rock ‚n‘ roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

Many people have an intense feeling about what they’re best at. Too often, they’re driven away from it by other people.

I definitely think, generally, rap is misogynistic.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

The reason why I wear gold – I wear gold for three reasons. One, when Jesus was born, three wise men came from the east: one brought frankincense, one brought myrrh, the other one brought gold. The second reason I wear gold is I can afford it. The third reason I wear it, it’s symbolic of my African heritage.

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

My connection with Brazil is so abstract. My blood and my way of thinking is Brazilian, but that’s it. I don’t tend to go back to the past, and although I have an apartment there, I rarely visit. When I move, I really move.

Everyone has their style and your style explains a lot about who you are – you feel me? I’ve had style since childhood, so I like to dress how I feel. But maybe I get carried away by some trends.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

So there’s no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn’t necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn’t necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up.

In Puerto Rico we dance to everything.

All cultures have these feelings about non-functional areas of activity. And the more time people have on their hands, the more they commit it to those areas.

Y’all are so cute and y’all talk so proper over here. I love England.

Dancing was always part of my culture growing up in Barbados. When I shot my 1st video I worked really hard with my choreographer to perfect the routines.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

Compton got such a legacy in hip-hop.