Quotes About Culture

She suspected that she was quite like Helena Kraft in that she was capable and ambitious and wanted to get a pat on the back from her superiors. That was not necessarily always a good thing though. With that tendency, if you operate in an unhealthy culture you risk becoming just as unhealthy yourself and — who knows, perhaps it is the will to please that leads people to crime just as often as evil or greed.

if you operate in an unhealthy culture you risk becoming just as unhealthy yourself.

Don't make jokes about food.

What's wrong with Barbara Kingsolver?" Eva asked. "She is the embodiment of liberal piety at its most middlebrow and tendentious. Her novels are the beef ribs of fiction.

You never feel more American than when you leave America.

Spécial" is one of those elusive French words that means something (or someone) is...peculiar. The use of it is one of the rare times that the French are noncommittal about their opinions.

Americans go into situations expecting things to go well. When they don't, we have meltdowns. The French go into situations expecting things not to go in their favor, so they're prepared when they don't.

Telling someone in France that they did something that was not correct is an affront to their honor, almost as severe as being told they're mal élevé, or "badly raised.

eau de Javel, that universally loved liquid developed here in 1789 that's still dear to the French to this day.

So I asked the salesclerk for a jar of confiture de groseilles, which is pronounced "gro-zay." But with my less-than-stellar command of the language, I asked for "confiture de grosses selles" (which I pronounced as "gross sells"). The saleswoman's jaw nearly hit the counter: I'd ordered turd jam…make that big-turd jam.

Except a pot in French is not called a pot, but a casserole. Unless it has two handles, in which case it's a cocotte.

Don't you mean the Vierge Noire, the Black Virgin?" "Uh, yes. Isn't that what I was talking about?" "Daveed, a verge is a penis.

a handheld hose. I couldn't find in my dictionnaire the word for the specific kind of hose my European partner was used to, but Claude knew the right term because, as he told me, he had several Italian clients: a douchette anale.

le parisien publicité.")

Speciàl" is one of those elusive French words that means something (or someone is...peculiar. The use of it is one of the rare times that the French are noncommittal about their opinion.

the exceptional fromagerie Laurent Dubois,

never lop off the pointy nez, the "nose," of the cheese. This is considered terribly rude and arrogant.

the Marché d'Aligre, which I think is the most exciting market in Paris.

Spécial is one of those elusive French words that means something (or someone) is…peculiar.

Sink-searching meant I had to expand my French vocabulary yet again. There aren't just sinks in France: there are éviers, lave-mains, bacs à lave, bassins, vasques, and lavabos. Each type of sink has its own raison d'être.

On the rue Rambuteau, a street that cuts through the Marais, is Pain de Sucre. It's not a drugstore, but arguably

Rap is poetry to music, like beatniks without beards and bongos.

When everything else is gone you'll still have the French Quarter, cockroaches and Cher.

I'm just trying to make a smudge on the collective unconscious.