Quotes About Adaptation

Most of my work in New York has been on new musicals. And all through the preview process, they throw you new songs, new lyrics, new choreography, new scripts; you're constantly getting new material. You might get it in the morning and put it in the show at night. It happens every single day, so those muscles are pretty toned.

I was criticized a lot when I was singing in Korean. The producers and people from my agency would point out my accent and tones, and would tell me I sound too American to fit the local market.

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

I think it's really hard for me... to sing in English, because it's not my mother tongue.

I speak English, so I am no longer cute. My tongue itches for French.

I've certainly had to bite my tongue on occasion and live to fight another day, so to speak, on certain things. But when you're new and fresh, you come out and think, 'I don't want to screw my chance up, so I'll go along with what everybody else does.'

What is Americanization? It manifests itself, in a superficial way, when the immigrant adopts the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here. Far more important is the manifestation presented when he substitutes for his mother tongue the English language as the common medium of speech.

I've played American characters before, so I've naturally become more at ease. Still, there are some American words that I cannot get my tongue around, but if you keep it flowing, you are never too far away from the truth.

English has always been a mongrel tongue, snapping up words from every continent its speakers encountered.

Things that are so hard for people, like playing championship-level Go and poker, have turned out to be relatively easy for the machines. Yet at the same time, the things that are easiest for a person - like making sense of what they see in front of them, speaking in their mother tongue - the machines really struggle with.

From the start, English has happily absorbed words from every tongue it's encountered.

The biggest issue for me has been the language because I speak so much German now. I've had to focus on my English and find more words to describe what I want to say and also soften my tone. It was quite stiff from 20 years of speaking German, so when I started speaking more English, oh my god, my tongue was like: 'Argh'!

Tamil is almost like my mother tongue and for quite some time, I had been concentrating on Telugu.

I'm not a xenophobe - I think immigration is a good thing for most countries - but they transmute the foibles of their native tongues into English in a way that's difficult to figure out.

Motley Crue recorded 'Tonight' and it's great fun to hear other people do my stuff. The only problem with it is it's so damn hard to play.

The biggest surprise has been making the adjustment after losing a game. In the NBA you could lose tonight and you have to put that game behind you because you have another game the next night.

I guess I could sit around and say, 'Gee, I wish I were playing at the Capital Centre tonight instead of Hammerjacks,' but it doesn't happen.

We used to be called the Dixie Chickens. Then we played at a barbecue place, and they had a sign saying, 'Featured Tonight: The Dixie Chickens,' and everybody started ordering it for dinner! So we shortened it.

I want to get back and figure out how we're going to make 'The Tonight Show' funny and good.

I think the biggest difficulty from transitioning from professional wrestling to the acting world is generally toning down your performance.

Like to me, I did the 'Harajuku' stuff. I did the crazy stuff. And now I kind of want to tone that back, and it's not toning my personality back, it's just showing like I don't only have to do that.

The only way I see myself in a serious relationship is if I am toning it down a bit.

It's football. The game hasn't changed. There's not tons of new concepts every year that go in. Offense is offense; it's our job to move the ball, to score points, and keep our defense off the field.

I learn tons of John Frusciante's licks from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I'm never going to play like the Chili Peppers, but I might use that if I've got a dub beat or reggae thing mixed with a soul thing.