German and English firms operate internationally, while French firms do not. The only place where they all have work is in China. Anybody can sell himself in China!
I'm still an English professor at Rice University here in Houston. They've been very generous in letting me on a very long leash to just work on 'The Passage' and its sequels.
I get work because I'm primarily a novelist but I've become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.
I remember when I got my first opportunity to work in America, I didn't speak a lot of English, so I only really knew my lines for the movie I was doing.
For English assignments I was constantly coming up with these strange adventure stories... But I actually wanted to be an artist, or maybe work in the comic book industry.
I studied English at Princeton in the early eighties in what I consider a period of high obscurity. Professors and students ran around discussing the work of critics and philosophers that I doubt they'd read or understood.
The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire bla...
The beliefs and behaviour of the Restoration reflect the theories of society put forward by Thomas Hobbes in The Leviathan, which was written in exile in Paris and published in 1651. Like many texts of the time, The Leviathan is an allegory. It recal...
It is the voice of everyday people, rather than of a self-conscious 'artist', that we hear in Caedmon's Hymn, and in such texts as Deor's Lament (also known simply as Deor) or The Seafarer. These reflect ordinary human experience and are told in the ...
I think we should model parts of the English language after the Inuits, who have 52 words for snow. Why don't we have 52 words for love? Instead, I have to rely on metaphors like, Her love was as pure as yellow snow.
In America, doctors, lawyers, generals, actors, television people and politicians are admired and rewarded. Not teachers. Teaching is the downstairs maid of professions. Teachers are told to use the service door or go round the back. They are congrat...
Almásy: What do you love? Katharine Clifton: What do I love? Almásy: Say everything. Katharine Clifton: Hm, let's see... Water. Fish in it. And hedgehogs; I love hedgehogs. Almásy: And what else? Katharine Clifton: Marmite - I'm addicted. And bath...
Hattori Hanzo: What brings you to Okinawa? The Bride: I'm here to see a man. Hattori Hanzo: Oh yeah? You have a friend living in Okinawa? The Bride: Not quite. Hattori Hanzo: Not a friend? The Bride: I've never met him. Hattori Hanzo: Never? Who is h...
Combo: But I've got one question to ask you. Do you consider yourself English, or Jamaican? [There's a long uneasy silence, as Milky looks around nervously to the rest of his friends... ] Milky: [eventually] English. Combo: Lovely, lovely, love you f...
I never knew what language they'd lapse into when fucked - Urdu or Telugu or a mix of both (only the techies came in English).
Don't fuck with an English major. They keep lots of useless crap trapped in their heads. Once in a while they let some of it out and it bites you square on the ass.
The history of literature is very far from being one of simple progress.
I'd studied English since the first grade but considered it a murky language, one whose grammar seemed to have been made up on the fly
I trained as a writer before I became a lawyer. I was headed for a life as an English professor, but that just wasn't me. I'm not a scholar; I didn't have a scholar's attitude toward literature.
When I was old enough, I was 21 years of age, I decided to come to America. I did it illegally, so I jumped the border. I didn't speak any English.
The English Bible - a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.
