Cultural Surprise Quotes

'Sopranos' was a fascinating moment, just catching our whole culture by surprise, a fun ride to be on while I'm learning the craft.

In Singapore, when we actually met foreign fans and talked to them, it was like 'Wow! They really exist!'

In Australia, it's people from Asian countries who most often recognise me. There are often people just looking at me at the supermarket, like they're shocked to think I would go to the supermarket.

I'm surprised and disappointed in American culture.

Ireland is a place that's beautiful and interesting, but I remember when I went there as a teenager with my parents, I was like, "Okay, I'll go to Ireland with my parents. It's going to be green." I think people underestimate it, in that it's, "Oh, it's green," and then you get there, and it's like, "Wow, it is green!" It's, "Oh, there's Irish music," and then you get there, and you're like, "Oh, this Irish music is amazing!" You underestimate it.

British people are surprised that I'm British! It's extraordinary, I get tweets every day from British people saying, 'I had no idea you were British.'

When people heard my voice, they were shocked that I could speak Hindi.

When my first novel, 'Crazy Rich Asians,' was published in 2013, many readers were astonished to learn that in Asia, there were women who dressed in couture from morning till night.

But anything that you hear about Japan is nothing like what you see when you actually go over there and see it, you know, in a real situation.

I never thought I would be standing here, married to an All-American guy, living in Oklahoma. What a country.

South America was amazing, very powerful. We didn't imagine they like K-pop there and they loved it!

This whole golf thing was so left field for us, as Polynesians, but he had a lot of knowledge about sports in general. My dad was a genius, really. He was an absolute genius.

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

When I was doing missionary work when I was younger, which started this obsession of mine with the literature of witness, I was a translator for a missionary group, and I spent years in a Tijuana dump. People were really thrown by the fact that the Mexican poor, many of them pureblood indigenous people, seemed happy.

In India you don't find propaganda against Pakistan. During the war there was a little of it, naturally, but even during the war we were able to control it. In fact the Pakistanis were astonished by this. There were prisoners in the camp hospitals who exclaimed, 'What? You're a Hindu doctor and you want to cure me?'

No race has the last word on culture and on civilization. You do not know what the black man is capable of; you do not know what he is thinking and therefore you do not know what the oppressed and suppressed Negro, by virtue of his condition and circumstance, may give to the world as a surprise.

India is a place where one of the great pleasures for a foreigner is that you're constantly surprised. Everywhere you look is something that is either funny, or very moving, but there is always so much that is so unexpected. That's part of the reason why people who like it tend to love it.

I enjoy the reaction I get in the U.S.A. when people discover I have an English accent. They don't expect that, and it's kind of a kick.

When I came from Europe, I was told that Americans don't care about soccer and this and that. But the way people cared was beyond my wildest expectations. You can't manufacture that.

Italy was a surprise in my life. I went there just to make money and then go back to Israel and study psychology. The arts wasn't something I grew up with or thought I could be part of.

I remember surfing in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, even Madeira, when local fishermen had never seen a surfboard before, and refused to believe that we could ride a wave on one.