Cultural Observation Quotes

There are roles out there and women out there that are fascinating to me, and there are things in our culture that I see that I want to express. It's my passion to express that.

Those English and Scottish know how to do accents.

I don't know why, anytime you see a car filled with people, it's either Middle Easterners or Mexicans. It's one of those two. Even for short trips, my dad would be like, 'Okay, everybody in the car.'

A Martian would think that the English worship at supermarkets, not in churches.

I have watched as a people and as a country and a culture over the course of my teenage-into-adulthood life, and I do still think there is a tremendous amount of homophobia that exists.

I must dress in costly materials. People scrutinize every article I wear with critical curiosity. The very fact of having grown up in the West, subjects me to more searching observation.

The same applies to any artist; we are the tools and instruments of our talent. We are outsiders; we have no place in society because society is what we’re watching, and dealing with.

Then years back, when I moved to California, I happened to see a book about fashions of 19th-century Victorian England, only four pages of which was devoted to the dress of the working class.

My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.

As a young boy in Libya, it was hard to escape the conclusion that the women were the most feeling and most functional part of society.

A man must generally get away some hundreds or thousands of miles from home before he can be said to begin his travels. Why not begin his travels at home? Would he have to go far or look very closely to discover novelties? The traveler who, in this sense, pursues his travels at home, has the advantage at any rate of a long residence in the country to make his observations correct and profitable. Now the American goes to England, while the Englishman comes to America, in order to describe the country.

I could not spend the rest of my life sitting in Brazil writing down who called whom uncle and aunt.

I do a lot of cultural material that's based on my traveling around the world. I basically just report what I've seen and where I've been.

I spent a lot of time standing on street corners [of New York City] talking to local residents. I spent time in bookstores and galleries. But most of the time, I really did not have much to do.

For years, whenever I'd been travelling and came back to Copenhagen, I'd think: 'People are so stylish.' And it's not any one class. It's everyday life.

Only a Californian would have observed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the real fake from the fake fake.

Hardly anyone has noticed that in the Northern Hemisphere people stir their drinks counterclockwise, whereas the same people stir their drinks clockwise when visiting the Southern Hemisphere.

I just got back from New York. You ever been there? There was a big gay parade going on there when I was there, and I never been to one of them, and I like a parade. I always like a parade. So, I go there, and it turns out, it's just a bunch of gay guys.

One gets tired of the role critics are supposed to have in this culture: It's like being the piano player in a whorehouse; you don't have any control over the action going on upstairs.

A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.

I've been to New York many times, and I've always noticed that there aren't that many French tucks around.

The nice thing about England is that they actually speak English.

A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.

I love gentiles. In fact, on of my favorite activities is Protestant spotting.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.