cultural familiarity Quotes

We, as Americans, have so much to learn here. We have a shockingly low level of global awareness and familiarity and little idea of how the world sees us. And those disturbing facts keep getting us into a lot of trouble.

I know just enough Japanese to get by if I get lost and greet an audience properly, just from having a lot of Japanese friends and being there over the years.

I was not grown up in the U.S., nor in Japan. In order to create a video game that people around the globe can enjoy and relate to, I can't draw things deeply rooted in the local culture that I'm not familiar with. That's why we are not doing games about football or samurai.

I spent a little time in Germany as a schoolboy learning German, and it's a country I knew very well, spent a lot of time in. I knew the history very well. I've always wanted to do a piece of work about the post-war period, of one sort or another.

I am very familiar with Hungary, because I grew up in Romania, which borders it.

I think a lot of people, even if you're not Asian, you go to your place of origin where your family comes from, and you get this sense of, 'Wow - people look like me and talk like me and treat me like their son in the stores and like a cousin in the restaurants.'

The Manchester move was OK. I was still in England and I knew I could go back home.

As an Indian, you feel easily connected with certain histories in places like Indonesia, where one sees, because of the presence of the Hindu-Buddhist past, Hindus still living there or Muslims performing rituals that are instantly familiar.

So for everybody who allows themselves to be separated from me because I said 'African' instead of 'Nubian' or 'Black' or 'Kemet' or 'original' or 'Israelite,' don't be so foolish. I say 'African' because the continent of Africa is the land from which we all originate. It is the word that we are most familiar with right now.

In the U.K., we're surrounded by American accents. Anything we watch in television. We have 'How I Met Your Mother' and all these other shows here, so it's not something that's really alien to us.

Americans know more about religion than almost any other topic.

The trick to political humor is not to know more than everyone else knows, but to know just what everyone else knows.

I know what I write about seems exotic to a lot of people, but not for me. I pulled up to an old trading post and saw a few elderly Navajos sitting on a bench. I felt right at home.

I remember, as a kid, I loved kimchi. It wasn't weird to me at all because it was in our house all the time. There was never a second when a huge jar wasn't in our refrigerator. I remember bringing it to school, and that just did not go over well at all.

Being Orthodox Jewish is kind of like being raised on like network sitcoms.

I like to be in a European city where I can speak my language.

It wasn't as if I was simply some guy who had never seen the other side of the tracks.

Shakespeare feels very natural to me.

I've gotten to really, really like being back in the States. It's so easy being in your own country, and I really like Americans - typical American towns and provincial college towns are my ideal place to be.

Sometimes I forget when I read a book that it didn't exist in English first.

When you're in a movie with Will Ferrell, well, it's time to at least sometimes throw the script away. And that character in 'Talladega Nights' I found a lot easier to kind of riff with because I related to it more, those kind of Southern, almost rednecky guys. That's a culture that I'm familiar with, that makes sense for me to spew.

For years I've wanted to write about the Australian countryside, but, like most Australians, I've only got a tourist's knowledge of it. I thought that if I disobeyed that basic rule of writing - write about what you know - I'd write a thin and inauthentic book.

Most Americans, I think, know very little about East Asia or Southeast Asia. American businesspeople who have been here, they are very knowledgeable about this area, but the average American? No.

I certainly want a name that I can pronounce!

In order to deviate successfully, one has to have at least a passing acquaintance with whatever norm one expects to deviate from.