Quotes About Culture

We have a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong.

Tonight is when the obscene becomes the acceptable.

Gran was just being polite. Southern people are supposed to be polite and gracious. She's trying to show me how to be the same way.

The British never seem to do anything until they've had a cup of tea, By which time it's too late.

We live in an age of mediocrity.

I'd like to meet the man who decided that people do or don't look Jewish. What the hell does that mean anyway? Is it the American penchant for pinning things down, catergorizing, for pigeonholing people? Whatever it is, it's wrong.

insofar as an American thinks that the sex he or she is having is an intimate, private thing constructed within a space governed by personal consent, she or he is having straight sex, straight sex authorized by national culture; she or he is practicing national heterosexuality...

There is an elaborate North African mezuzah case that dates to sometime in the 1700s, and by the nineteenth century Jews in Russia, eastern Europe, and Morocco were shaping mezuzah cases out of silver, creating miniature arks and fish and other pretty symbols in which to house their slices of parchment.

I don't think I've ever been called beautiful by a boy in my life. It's definitely not an English-guy thing; in London, we pride ourselves on our irony and sarcasm. You're lucky if you even get a backhanded compliment from a boy. "Your hair doesn't look terrible today"--that kind of thing.

Yet it was an odd twist of language. Based on the way people usually used the words, Christian was traight and Patrick was gay. But Christian, when he got wasted, was gay if you used the old-fashioned, oh-so-merry definition of the word, while Patrick was straight-edge because he didn't drink to the point of passing out.

That's Chinese, not Japanese

Ah, Christ, this is the place with the messed-up sizes, isn't it? Like, 'grande' instead of 'large?' He stretched it out all stupid and fake-French, and Christina and I shared a look. "Why can't you just call it a large?" he asked. "You could except grande is a medium." Christina said, "Venti is large." "Venti. Right. For the love of God, can't I order in plain English?

Know ye yet the edda? Know ye yet it all?

Basically a large hourglass, the sand clock had been in use since Egyptian times;

according to Jewish law. Nevertheless, the family considered itself Christian

Such were the men on whom an immature king from a foreign culture, speaking a foreign tongue

Everywhere Magellan looked, there seemed to be an idol mocking him; they were even arrayed along the shore, and their appearance was disturbing to European sensibilities

Apparently, a tribe of Fuegian Indians had used the place to bury their dead in warm weather, and then vanished

but they found only a primitive structure sheltering two hundred gravesites.

the Indians whom Magellan and his crew would encounter in Rio de Janeiro:

Vespucci thrilled readers with gruesome accounts of the Indians' customs.

These men are accustomed to bore holes in their lips and cheeks, and in these holes they place bones and stones;

Their marriages are not with one woman but with as many as they like, and without much ceremony

More troubling, the Indians practiced cannibalism and human sacrifice in the course of their battles