Aladdin: Genie, I wish for your freedom. Genie: One bona fide prince pedigree coming up. I... What? Aladdin: [holds the lamp up to Genie] Genie, you're free!
It doesn't matter what your pedigree is, who your family is or what degrees you have. What really matters is how you perform your job and how you produce results. Whoever could do the best job, that's who the focus is on - and it definitely doesn't m...
We were the outliers: my mother was the only Western woman (khawagayya, in Egyptian Arabic) to have married into the family, and during my childhood, we were the only members living outside of Egypt. So between my father's prestige as the eldest son ...
Liberty of imagination should be the most precious possession of a novelist. To try voluntarily to discover the fettering dogmas of its own inspiration, is a trick worthy of humna perverseness which, after inventing an absurdity, endeavours to find f...
Thinking about lunch. Smoked salmon with pedigreed lettuce and razor-sharp slices of onion that have been soaked in ice water, brushed with horseradish and mustard, served on French butter rolls baked in the hot ovens of Kinokuniya. A sandwich made i...
Every label thinks, when they sign someone, 'This is the perfect pedigree to sign. They're cute, they can sing, they can dance, et cetera.' And they say to the public, 'Here, this is what you're gonna like.' But you might say, 'No, I don't like that!...
Heritage was everything: it was a golden skeleton key, gleaming with power, able to get the wielder through any number of locked doors; it was the christening of the marriage bed with virgin blood on snow-white sheets; it was the benediction of a pri...
Malcolm X: [narrating] I was special. The only colored kid in the class. I became sort of a mascot. Like a pink poodle. I was called a nigger so many times, I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. I thought that was my name. They talked abou...
Excerpt from page 3 of "Wicked Washington" Shelly Williams, the main character, speaking about her life: And close and dangerous calls were almost my last name. Yet I felt as comfortable among the street hustlers, junkies, thieves, and criminals of D...
What constitutes an American? Not color nor race nor religion. Not the pedigree of his family nor the place of his birth. Not the coincidence of his citizenship. Not his social status nor his bank account. Not his trade nor his profession. An America...
A great man, Luigi Chinetti. Clever and smart and resourceful. He died in 1994 at the age of ninety-three years. I often wonder who he is now, who possesses his soul. Does a child know his own spiritual background, his own pedigree? I doubt it. But s...
I don't want these. They're mud and they've got no color. Or at least the color is different from what I'm used to. Take any American city, in autumn, or in winter, when the light makes the colors dance and flow, and look at it from a distant hill or...
Frank Costello: Get you? Give you? Who the fuck do you work for? What? Colin Sullivan: All right, all right. Frank, Frank, Frank, I'm sorry, Frank. If you could, please. What I need are SS numbers, DOBs, just all the pedigree information so I can run...
Have you ever seen someone buy a piece of furniture or clothing from New York, Chicago or London? Even though the exact same product was available right down the street at a local retailer for a fraction of the cost? This kind of phenomenon is referr...
