The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.
Edith Wharton

The anger that Uncle Junior has comes from my background. My father was the son of an Italian immigrant, and I've seen the fire of the Italian temperament. It can be explosive sometimes in ways that are both funny and tragic.
Dominic Chianese

The business of the advertiser is to see that we go about our business with some magic spell or tune or slogan throbbing quietly in the background of our minds.
Marshall McLuhan

The conception of background music is changing. You use less and less of it these days.
Satyajit Ray

The discipline of desire is the background of character.
John Locke

The fact that I have such a problem that people... that that has to, you know, be on people's mind, what my personal background is. To me, to be very frank with you, is a totally irrelevant thing.
Werner Klemperer

The first months at Harvard were more than challenging, as I came to the realization that the humanities could be genuinely interesting, and, in fact, given the weaknesses of my background, very difficult.
Philip Warren Anderson

The food was interesting. My background is Russian, so cheese and potatoes are my love. There was plenty of that. And fried cheese! It is really, really, really good. And really, really, really bad for you. It's like an artery on a plate.
Michelle Trachtenberg

The lighting is so important. One thing that makes me nuts about the lighting now is that they spend an enormous amount of time lighting the set, the background. But the most important thing in the scene is the actor.
Donna Mills

The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life.
Jonathan Franzen

The New Testament witnesses were fully aware of the background against which the resurrection took place.
Josh McDowell

The office of President is a great one; to every true American it seems the greatest on earth. And to me, as I was engaged in weaving a background of music for the pageantry of it, there came a deeper realization of the effect of that office on the man.
John Philip Sousa

The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace and civilization.
Lytton Strachey

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion or ethnic background, is that we all believe we are above-average drivers.
Dave Barry

The relationship I have to my fatherland is like that of mothers with crippled children: they love them all the more, the more crippled they are. Germany is the background of all my plans, the return to Germany.
Friedrich List

The results indicate that heterogeneity of race and heterogeneity of family educational background can increase the achievement of children from weak educational backgrounds with no adverse effect on children from strong educational backgrounds.
James S. Coleman

The revolution is carried out by means of one's thought, not through one's family background.
Kim Jong Il

There are a lot of things you can do with a law degree background, but I just didn't have a passion for it.
Matthew McGrory

There is a real diversity of talent and background on the A list so as to better reflect our society in all walks. There are people who have been candidates before, Councillors, Doctors, business leaders, charity campaigners.
Adam Rickitt

There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of that tends to diminish, but it's certainly present in the early work.
Chaim Potok