Quotes About Culture

La culture est comme le smog. Pour y vivre, il faut en respirer une partie et, inévitablement, être contaminé.

For me, writing is like a good pair of pajamas -- comfortable. In our culture, writing is more often costumed up in a military outfit. We want our sentences to march in neat little rows, like well-behaved boarding-school children.

These artists, shadow artists through no fault of their own, hear the distant piping of the dream but are unable to make their way through the cultural maze to find it.

I admired the English immensely for all that they had endured, and they were certainly honorable, and stopped their cars for pedestrians, and called you "sir" and "madam," and so on. But after a week there, I began to feel wild. It was those ruddy English faces, so held in by duty, the sense of "what is done" and "what is not done," and always swigging tea and chirping, that made me want to scream like a hyena

It's easy to get the feeling that you know the language just because when you order a beer they don't bring you oysters. (Paul Child)

I had come to the conclusion that I must really be French, only no one had ever informed me of this fact. I loved the people, the food, the lay of the land, the civilized atmosphere, and the generous pace of life.

It seemed that in Paris you could discuss classic literature or architecture or great music with everyone from the garbage collector to the mayor.

The German birds didn't taste as good as their French cousins, nor did the frozen Dutch chickens we bought in the local supermarkets. The American poultry industry had made it possible to grow a fine-looking fryer in record time and sell it at a reasonable price, but no one mentioned that the result usually tasted like the stuffing inside of a teddy bear.

In fact, I didn't like traveling first class at all. Yes, it was nice to have a bathroom in a hotel and fine service at breakfast...but none of it seemed foreign enough for me. It was all so pleasantly bland that I felt as if I were back on the SS America. I don't like it when everyone speaks perfect English; I'd much rather struggle with my phrasebook.

In France, Paul explained, good cooking was regarded as a combination of national sport and high art, and wine was always served with lunch and dinner.

If a tourist enters a food stall thinking he's going to be cheated, the salesman will sense this and obligingly cheat hi. But if a Frenchman senses that a visitor is delighted to be in his store, and takes a genuine interest in what is for sale, then he'll just open up like a flower.

If a tourist enters a food stall thinking he's going to be cheated, the salesman will sense this and obligingly cheat him. But if a Frenchman senses that a visitor is delighted to be in his store, and takes a genuine interest in what is for sale, then he'll just open up like a flower.

Of course, our servings had assumed that one was making at least a three-course meal à la française. But that wasn't the American style of eating, so we had to compromise.

The sweetness and generosity and politeness and gentleness and humanity of the French had shown me how lovely life can be if one takes time

Oh yes, we Londoners pretend to be all civilized and cultured, a beacon to the world, but it's all lies. We're rotten.

The Fourth Crown Princess of the blue Cresent Islands had sixteen rituals to observe from the moment of waking to when she broke her fast.

Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time. Art does not exist for art's sake: it exists for people's sake.

If these are indeed the spirits of Englishmen and Englishwomen who have passed over into the next world, surely they would know how to form a proper queue?

Did you know that there is no exact rhyme in the Russian language for the word 'pravda'? Ponder and weigh this insufficiency in your mind. Doesn't that just echo down the canyons of your soul?

in this country shadings of class resist time longer than differentials in age

None of this, of course, was ever stated: the genteel social Darwinism of the English middle classes always remained implicit.

Why does anything left-wing have to be trendy before it's read, and by the time it's trendy it's already a force for conservatism?