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Culture means, I think, that you have widened your experience enough through reading and through being a little bit thoughtful about these things that it has changed your outlook in some ways. And not necessarily made you a better human being but made you see things.

I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture.

You experience other cultures to give you a kind of shock that makes you look at your own culture. You appreciate it more as a result of being out of it, but you also realise there are some things lacking in your culture.

I'm not certain that I draw from any one culture more than others. Many myths and legends of many different cultures are really the same story when you get to the heart of it. They are often cultural cautionary tales about how we should behave and how we should live.

There was a time when I was knocking on doors and concerned with being recognized in dominant culture. I've found a space where the terrain is different, where I'm embraced by people like me, and where I'm building new ways of doing things, as opposed to trying to insert myself in a place that might not be welcoming.

I always remember that I am a representative of my country, and I always think about the culture I'm bringing to people.

If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.

It's very, very hard to affect culture. And you can get surprised thinking you're farther down the path of change than you really are because, frankly, most of us like the way things are.

I now talk to different cultures, and I hope that I can bridge those gaps and differences between us. It's an adventure, a dream... I feel like I'm on an anthropological mission.

Stories are one of the means by which a culture preserves its identity.