Quotes About Culture

The day women stop reading—that's the day the novel dies!

Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else's version of themselves—to anyone else's version! Every country knows more about America than Americans know about themselves! And Americans know absolutely nothing about any other country!

When people say that German or any other language is romantic... all they really mean is that they've enjoyed a past in the language.

People regard art too highly, and history not enough

What we witnessed with the death of Kennedy was the triumph of television; what we saw with his assassination, and with his funeral, was the beginning of television's dominance of our culture-- for television is at its most solemnly self-serving and at its mesmerizing best when it is depicting the untimely deaths of the chosen and the golden. It is as witness to the butchery of heroes in their prime-- and of all holy-seeming innocents-- that televisions achieves its deplorable greatness.

Because I was a Wheelwright-and, therefore, a New England snob-I'd assumed that Phoenix was largely composed of Mormons and Baptists and Republicans;

one of the more sophisticated and accepting things about Europe, when it came to difficult decisions regarding sexual identity, was that the Europeans were so used to sexual differences that they had already begun to make fun of them.

Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world!

He hadn't known many British, but some of them seemed crazy to him, and so it seemed a small thing to agree to—and Wally thought it was wise to agree with whoever it was who held the catheter.

In the sixties, dear Bill, we did not say 'top' and 'bottom' - we said 'pitcher' and 'catcher'...

Americans are suckers for an English accent.

Murder, more murders, still more murders! The Germans take murder more seriously than we do—I mean, as literature," Uncle Johan explained

You have taught yourself to read English, too," Pepe said slowly to the boy; the girl suddenly gave him the shivers, for no known reason. "English is just a little different—I can understand it," the boy told him

Canon Campbell told me that most smart-ass Canadians tend to move to the United States. I

The day women stop reading—that's the day the novel dies!" the

the public entertainment of any period distinguishing the period as clearly as its so-called politics

Lupe's language was incomprehensible—what came out of her mouth didn't even sound like Spanish.

After twenty years in Canada, there are certain American lunatics who still fascinate me.

But Americans are not great historians, and so, for years—educated by my neighbor—I thought that sagamore was an Indian word for lake.

Quite understandably, as a Jew, Noah felt that German was the language of his people's executioners and he refused to learn a word of it.)

The destruction of art by sociology and psychoanalysis," he called it.

I never feel as fully awake as when I'm in New York.

Nothing draws us closer to one another than the degree to which we face our deepest shame openly in one another's company. Coleridge and Wordsworth dreaded such self-exposure; we adore it. What we want is to feel known, warts and all—the more warts, the better. It is the great illusion of our culture that what we confess to is who we are.

I never feel as fully awake as when I'm in NY.