W. G. Sebald Quotes

I'm rarely singing in English.

I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish.

It is asked of me that I give my first speech in this house in a language [English] other than my mother tongue [French.] …. Even if I knew English as intimately as I knew French, I would still give my first speech in the language of my French Canadian compatriots

I haven't shifted language. I'm writing in English because I like it. I'm a sucker for the language, but the good old poems I'm still writing in Russian.

Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.

Even if I think in English, it's more a language of acting than French.

I've never lived in an English-speaking country, ever, but I lived in Austria. So, my second language is German. And when I went to school, I had a lot of classes in English.

I write in English because I was raised in the States and educated in this language.

Even though many Indians can read or speak English, for most, it is not their first language. At the office, we speak in English, but we consume our culture in our own language.

When I was a child, I grew up speaking French, I mean, in a French public school. So my first contact with literature was in French, and that's the reason why I write in French.

For the benefit of those who are not bilingual, I will now continue in English.

I write my novels in English first; then they are translated into Turkish by professional translators. Then I take their translation and rewrite. So basically, I write the same novel twice.

I made French films and other films and a lot of Arabic films, but what I like is English for myself.

My translation work has been pretty separate from my fiction, as it was basically an accidental side project that turned into a separate and parallel career.

If I could talk in only one language for the rest of my life, it'd be Tamil.

I've always felt like I could express myself better in English just because the way the grammar works.

I'm happy to work in Malayalam.

I never knew that I would even be making English-language films.

In South Africa, we speak English and sometimes Afrikaans, sometimes Zulu, sometimes Xhosa.

I find it hard to write really cool texts in German. At some point I had the feeling that it didn't work for me any more. So I'd rather not write any German songs at all than write uncool ones.

Somehow, German just vanished at some point. We already started at an early stage to translate our albums, and at some point, we started to write only in English.

I am 100% proud Puerto Rican but have lived two-thirds of my life in the United States. So, there will be some things I write in English, but my main way of conversing with my audience is in Spanish because, at the end of the day, I'm a Latino.

I grew up learning Russian and translating English songs when I became a teenager, we got to listen to West Germany radio stations, and learning lyrics with picture book. These are my first experiences with the English language.

Maybe in Latvian one day I'll rap a little bit, but definitely not in English.

I've often been asked, 'aren't you going to sing in English?' So I'm very glad to have a song in English.