My parents never referenced Ethiopia that much, largely because of the circumstances under which we left. We left during a time of political upheaval, and there was a lot of loss that came with that, so my parents were reluctant to talk about those t...
Most Americans know nothing about the African forest, and it seems to them a very scary, spooky dangerous place. I've spent a lot of time in the forests of central Africa. I know they're beautiful places that contain a lot of different kinds of creat...
I had seen 'Do the Right Thing' when I was at college, and it was incredibly inspiring as a piece of cinema. Just brilliant, I thought. But saw 'Malcolm X' with a crowded audience. It was my first time in an American cinema, hearing an audience respo...
Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot,' billed as 'the laugh sensation of two continents,' made its American debut at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, in Miami, Florida, in 1956. My father, Bert Lahr, was playing Estragon, one of the two bowler-hatted tram...
Americans who read the papers or watch Jay Leno have been aware for some time now that there is a slim but real possibility - about 1 in 45,000 - that an 850-foot-long asteroid called Apophis could strike Earth with catastrophic consequences on April...
France has not only built a bureaucratic barrier against American culture, it has constructed a notorious intellectual case against it as well. The French spend hundreds of millions of dollars subsidizing film production, extend interest-free loans t...
Publishers have realized that, unlike the previous time period, American teenagers are both smarter and require more topical material than they had been giving them before that. For one thing, they'll read thicker books. Besides, has anybody looked a...
When you have an American mother from the Midwest and an Egyptian father, you travel back and forth and see such completely different stories in the news about the exact same events. It makes you think, 'How is anybody able to understand or even have...
A huge dollar bill is the most accurate way to teach children the real motto of the United States: In the Almighty Dollar We Trust... Until the average American realizes that capitalism damages her livelihood while augmenting the livelihoods of the w...
American media has just become talk radio, incredibly partisan name-calling and op-eds. I think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved it has completely failed to act as an effective fourth estate. And young people didn't sleep through that, as is w...
Cheating is not the American way. It is small, while we are large. It is cheap, while we are richly endowed. It is destructive, while we are creative. It is doomed to fail, while our gifts and responsibilities call us to achieve. It sabotages trust a...
[from trailer] Alex: Make sure to secure the door when I am gone. There are many dangerous people who wanna take things from Americans, and also kidnap them. Good night!
Forrest Gump: He was from a long great military tradition. Somebody from his family had fought and died in every single American war. I guess you could say he had a lot to live up to.
Chili: You weren't on Operation Hastings, Payback. You weren't even in country. Private Payback: Oh, eat shit and die, you fucking Spanish American. You fucking *pogue*! I was there man! I was in the shit with the grunts!
Captain Ramius: We will pass through the American patrols, past their sonar nets, and lay off their largest city, and listen to their rock and roll... while we conduct missile drills.
Jeffrey Wigand: Up to you, Jeffrey! That's the power you have, Jeffrey! Vile inside information the American public need to know! Lowell Bergman, the hotshot who never met a source he couldn't turn around!
Benjamin K. Arthur: Nor would I ask of any fellow American, in defense of his freedom, that which I would not gladly give myself: my life before my liberty!
Helen: We saw a wonderfully funny American film last night. Inez: Who was in it? Helen: Oh, I don't know. I forget the name. Gil: Wonderful but forgettable. It sounds like a film I've seen. I probably wrote it.
Gil: I'm a huge Mark Twain fan. I think you can make the case that all modern American literature comes from Huckleberry Finn. Ernest Hemingway: Do you box? Gil: No. Well... Not really, no.
Philomena: I've always wanted to see him in his big chair. Martin Sixsmith: Well, he was uh... a big man. Literally. 6 foot 4, tallest American president. Philomena: You can see that. He's tall even sitting down.
Student At Book Party: Professor Van Doren, I took your course at Columbia - "Hawthorne, Original Sin, and the American Experience". Well, as silly as it sounds, it changed my life. Mark Van Doren: Was it the Hawthorne or the sin?
