When I was in college, I did do some writing of poetry, somewhat inspired, I think at that time, by Carl Sandburg, because English was still relatively new to me, and Sandburg, of course, wrote in a very easy-to-understand, very colloquial and inform...
Madrid is not as big as London, but it is true when you are coming from a big city like Madrid, nothing is going to surprise you, and I am very happy to move to a city like London. It is a big city, and you can do everything you want with the respect...
We have Al Jazeera Arabic news, Al Jazeera English news, of course; we have three sports channels, and we have Al Jazeera Mubasher, which is a live channel that broadcasts live press conferences and symposiums and meetings. And, of course, we have Al...
I wanted to be an English teacher. I wanted to do it for the corduroy jackets with patches on the side. When I got to college, as I was walking across campus one day, I ripped off a little flyer for this sketch-comedy group. It ended up being one of ...
In many ways, 'What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World' is just one big thank-you note to my teachers. The book is dedicated to my fifth and sixth grade English teacher, Dr. Joseph D'Angelo, a massive force of erudition, martia...
It has been said, by engineers themselves, that given enough money, they can accomplish virtually anything: send men to the moon, dig a tunnel under the English Channel. There's no reason they couldn't likewise devise ways to protect infrastructure f...
I must have read every issue of 'Punch' published in the 20th century, and I think in the process I picked up the true voice of English humour - that amiable, fairly liberal, laconic voice which you find in something like 'Three Men in a Boat.'
I said, 'I'm going to the United States to study with Stella Adler and do movies because nobody here has done it and my passion is films.' But I came here and I didn't speak English, I didn't have a green card, I didn't know I had to have an agent, I...
It has always been very difficult for writers to survive commercially in India because the market was so small. But that's not true at all any more. It's one of the world's fastest growing and most vibrant markets for books, especially in English.
I can give you the King's English and then I can take it to the street, but do both or do one and don't do one knowing only the street. That's going to hold you back because what comes out is going to impress people, and it will impress them negative...
For a moment David was tempted to think that perhaps there were no good people at all outside concentration camps, but then he reminded himself of the sailor and Angelo and the English people who might have been ignorant but were certainly not bad.
I wanted to act when I was young. When I was 12, I asked the head of English at my school, 'Can I audition?' and he said, 'What would we want you for?' And I remember going, 'Oh yeah. Why would they want me?'
I was 23 years old, a freshman at university, and there I was, on the first day, sitting in a remedial English class. I was so ashamed I almost got up and left, but somehow I knew inside that if I ran away from this, I would hate myself forever.
Gareth Peirce: It's not the stairs that are killing your father. Gerry Conlon: Aye, what is it then? Gareth Peirce: It's your lack of faith. Gerry Conlon: Lack of faith? Faith in what? Gareth Peirce: In yourself. Gerry Conlon: No. I have faith in mys...
Shakespeare's bitter play [Troilus and Cressida] is therefore a dramatization of a part of a translation into English of the French translation of a Latin imitation of an old French expansion of a Latin epitome of a Greek romance. (p. 55)
He shook his head,'Fuck, you say such fucking weird things.' 'Is that still your favourite word?' asked Isola interestedly, 'I like "verisimilitude". Tolkein said the most beautiful English phrase is "cellar door",
When just a kid, moved back to Canada and looking for a taste of England, I’d picked up a book of my Gram’s, a dog-eared romance from the ’sixties about English hospital ‘sisters’ trying to get it on with the doctors, and thought it very sh...
The bridge between the words glamour and grammar is magic. According to the OED, glamour evolved through an ancient association between learning and enchantment.
Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide.
In this world . . . It's when: The French are chefs The British are police The Germans are engineers The Swiss are bankers And the Italians are lovers It's when: The English are chefs The Germans are police The French are engineers The Swiss are love...
Hey, any idea why Australians speak something that sounds deceptively like English but isn’t? I mean, I’m trying to figure out why I can’t seem to converse with another human being who speaks the same language as I do.
