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Quotations on English 255 Quotes Found I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath. Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn't answer the phone. Far from being the product of a democratic revolution and of an opposition to English institutions, the constitution of the United States was the result of a powerful reaction against democracy, and in favor of the traditions of the mother country. In English we must use adjectives to distinguish the different kinds of love for which the ancients had distinct names. The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major. A lot of words in English confuse the idea of life and electricity, like the word livewire. Of the love or hatred God has for the English, I know nothing, but I do know that they will all be thrown out of France, except those who die there. We still have a tradition certainly in English television; it's faded a bit in the last five years, but we still have a tradition where the important thing is the quality and the challenging nature of the programming. I can scarcely manage to scribble a tolerable English letter. I know that I am not a scholar, but meantime I am aware that no man living knows better than I do the habits of our birds. For 180 years, we voted in English. That is the true American tradition, and this amendment is true to our heritage, not what has existed unnaturally for the last 20 years. So I went to English school, secondary English school, so forget going to Mecca for my religious education. No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist. It has since been agreed that speeches given in English will be translated into French and vice versa, and even into German and Italian when necessary. No doubt translations into Esperanto will also soon be in demand. 'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it. I was playing rugby and the other games English school children do, and there was an event in which races were run, and I won these by a considerable margin. I look at myself, and I see a Spanish person who's trying to be understood by an English-speaking audience and is putting a lot of energy into that, instead of into expressing himself freely and feeling comfortable. Everybody in Spain is sick of me. But in America, there's curiosity about the new kid on the block who doesn't speak English very well. The attention makes me feel vulnerable, which is something I hadn't felt in a while. But I like it. The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes. Our common language is English. And our common task is to ensure that our non-English-speaking children learn this common language. People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me. That the king can do no wrong is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution. Yes, they broke the law, but we can't deport them. Let's get over this pointing fingers and do something about that, whether it - they have to pay a fine, learn to speak English, the history, you can do that. And then you have to give visas for the skills we need. English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did. The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth. I board with a poor Scotchman: his wife can talk scarce any English. There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives. It's funny how a film about a murderous old English toff can help you. The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me... by newspapers and the Bible. More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to. English policy may not yet have made the definite decision to attack us; but it doubtless wishes, by all and every means, even the most extreme, to hinder every further expansion of German international influence and of German maritime power. My least favorite phrase in the English language is "I don't care." People have lots of misconceptions about me. My mum, who is half French and half Spanish, gets outraged when I'm called quintessentially English. I owe my looks to my mum-which was 90 percent of getting my first job. And, some people would argue, 90 percent of my entire career. In the past when I was in Hollywood, I was like a dog. I felt humiliated. My English was not good. People would even ask me 'Jackie Who?'. Although an increasing proportion of the Hispanic population is foreign-born - about half of adults in this group - English proficiency is and should remain a requirement for citizenship. Being "contented" ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position. If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire. We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra. I am not accustomed to pay fulsome compliments to the English, by telling them that they are superior to all the world; but this I can say, that they do not deserve the name of cowards. I'm older than my sister so I started writing first. I started writing at school. I was always top of my class in composition, essays, English Lit and all of that. On the day of the show, I sit down with someone that speaks very good English and someone who speaks the local language very well and work out what I'm going to say. I unfortunately don't speak French, but my wife is now fluent in English, which really reflects rather badly on me. I met my wife through playing golf. She is French and couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak French, so there was little chance of us getting involved in any boring conversations - that's why we got married really quickly. I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying; he wanted me to make up dialogue. My father was a professor of civil engineering at MIT, and my mother taught high school English. I don't know what 'operational control' of the border means, but I do understand the English language. And as I understand that phrase, that's not true. We do not have operational control. Most people have no idea how to politely answer a phone. The English do, and it's been their only major business advantage for the past two centuries. Shakespeare, who is probably the greatest writer and poet of the English language, lived in a time that was politically very conservative and it's reflected in his writings. Everybody gets a little dose of Shakespeare. He's the greatest playwright in the English language, but his politics are fairly square. I think now, more than anytime I can remember, bands are sounding pretty similar whether they're English or American, from Manchester or London... or Leeds or Welsh or Irish. There's a focus that hasn't been there for ages and ages and some American bands are sounding quite English like they did in the late 70s and early 80s.
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