I saw New York differently after being in Paris for a few years.
Children born of married parents in America face a higher risk of seeing them break up than children born of unmarried parents in Sweden.
The Americans all love 'The Holy Grail', and the English all love 'Life Of Brian', and I'm afraid on this one, I side with the English.
I decided that Europeans and Americans are like men and women: they understand each other worse, and it matters less, than either of them suppose.
At first, Hendrix went and became a superstar in London, but if he walked past the Apollo in Harlem, no one would know who he was. I'm the hip-hop version of him.
Do you know how rare it is in parts of America to actually see 'an outfit'? France? I don't want to be anti-French, but there isn't a more unattractive group of people on the streets.
What I like about the American woman is she usually has a lot of dynamism. In the U.S., women have a tendency to go forward, to be more exaggerated than in Europe. Many times the rough ideas come from the States, then they are refined in Europe. The American women and the French women are still the best-dressed.
To travel is to discover that everybody is wrong. The philosophies, the civilizations which seem, at a distance, so superior to those current at home, all prove on a close inspection to be in their own way just as hopelessly imperfect.
Americans are cool; if you show just a chink of vulnerability, they respond so much. They'll pat you on the arm and say, 'Hey kid, you're all right.' Brits will respond but they are much more cynical.
Anthropology is separated from mass reading, and that is something that bothered Margaret Mead. She always said that she wrote everything for her grandmother, in a way that her grandmother could understand what she was saying.
Sitting down to a meal with an Indian family is different from sitting down to a meal with a British family.
Creating a body of mathematics is about intellectual labor, not some kind of transcendental revelation. There are plenty of important components of European fractal geometry that are missing from the African version.
Cultural anthropology is more and more rapidly getting to realize itself as a strictly historical science.
To me it's very obvious there are huge cultural differences between Americans and Canadians. But a lot of what we are is American.
In France, they call the people who come to the theatre 'les spectateurs'; in Britain and Ireland, they are the audience, the people who listen. This does not mean the French are not interested in language. On the contrary. It actually says more about the undeveloped visual sense over here.
Americans and French are notoriously monolingual, especially earlier generations. Language is a sense of pride in both cultures. I think that the French and Americans are like brothers or sisters who are so similar that they irritate one another.
I think that American people really know how to pursue fun, they really know how to have a good time. Japanese are somewhat more reserved than Americans, so I'm jealous.
The thing that I like about Germany is that Germans are so much like us. It's not like going to some other countries, where the differences are overwhelming and you walk around in a fog. Germans are so similar to Americans.
One of the things I love about Africa is the amount of dignity and respect and humility you see all the time. You don't realise how often you're disrespected until you are surrounded by respect.
I know of no department of natural science more likely to reward a man who goes into it thoroughly than anthropology. There is an immense deal to be done in the science pure and simple, and it is one of those branches of inquiry which brings one into contact with the great problems of humanity in every direction.
Muslims do drink, as anyone who has spent a wild weekend with Saudi booze tourists in Bahrain will know. Those Saudi tourists are like teenage girls in Manchester on a Saturday night. But each country and region is different.
I celebrated my 18th birthday in Japan, which was quite memorable; I was quite fascinated by the different traditions and the culture; it was so completely different to Australian culture.
I felt very special in Paris, more special than I felt in London. I love London for different reasons. I've always been close to London, being English. But somehow, there's something special about living as an Englishwoman in Paris.
The American high school graduate is two years behind his English, French or German counterpart; in Alabama, God knows how far behind.
I don't think falling in love in Slovakia is much different from falling in love in Tunbridge Wells.
