Quotes About Culture

But I wondered about the noise and roistering: what had this cacophony and masquerade to do with the Day of the Dead?

The Days of the Dead was just such a fiesta. It was a solemn ritual, it was a vigil in graveyards, it was a masquerade, it was a binge, it was an occasion for dressing up and looking fabulous, it included political protest, and it was a party.

the echo chamber that most expat communities become

Claudia Muzzi, of Italian ancestry, had traveled in Italy and indeed spoke Italian. But her most memorable experiences had been in the United States, specifically in Georgia. She planned to write about it later in the week.

the predominating characteristic of the Chinese was stoicism

It is rare in Mexico to meet someone who has no family connection to the US.

I went to the Yungang Caves outside Datong, where travelers used to draw chalk circles on the beautiful frescoes and Chinese workmen would hack them off the wall and wrap them up; and where another lively business was the beheading of Buddhas. Even so, there are plenty of Buddhas left-and several in the larger caves are as tall as a three-story building.

Visitors from Tucson and beyond would pop over for a break from the routine—an opportunity to buy clay pots or sombreros, drink a world-class margarita

In Cairo, there was a thin line between pestering and hospitality – indeed, they often amounted to the same thing, and although there were plenty of beggars there was little thievery.

An implication in all books about the country is that, though Europeans successfully emigrate to Mexico and become Mexican, no American can follow suit: the gringo remains incorrigibly a gringo.

On that first visit, Nogales seemed to me a border town trying to save itself, and I thought succeeding. Walking in the city, I was struck by the distinct air of foreignness mingled with a pleasing ordinariness

Mormonism was like junk food: It was American to the core and it looked all right, but it wasn't until after you had swallowed some that you felt strange. I

This Mexican hospitality to gringos is in ironic contrast to the present ubiquity of Mexicans who are demonized and fenced in, stamped as undesirable, considered suspect, and unwelcome in America.

I taught from a book called Modern American English. 'You're lucky to have me. I'm a modern American and I speak English, I said.

But Potosí was poor, and Potosinos were oppressed by the weakening peso and the high cost of living, and in such a situation—I had noticed this all over the American Deep South on my previous road trip—people hold on to their culture.

I decided to drive straight to Tijuana to make a slow, uninterrupted traverse of the entire frontera, a road trip from west to east, San Ysidro, California, to Brownsville, Texas, which was also Tijuana to Matamoros, zigzagging from the United States to Mexico and back, from one border town to the other.

In India, the past refuses to die, undisturbed by new realities.

Everywhere you looked in India there was evidence of a past that had attained mythical heights. From philosophy to architecture, few civilisations have left such an awesome record.

People – Americans, mostly – realise how attached they are to material comforts when they arrive in India.

Indians think it is important to remember, while Americans believe it is important to forget.

All TV is educational. The question is, 'What are we teaching?

Collective madness is called sanity ..

I'm an old, superstitious Arab, and I believe in our proverbs. There's one that says, 'Everything that happens once can never happen again. But anything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

When you travel, you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and on most journeys you don't even understand the language the people speak.