The working class of England take their deracination completely for granted. Disenchantment is the happy code that informs every byway of the underclass: service jobs, celebrity dreams, Lotto wins, leisured poverty on pre-crunch credit cards, it's all there, part of the story of an English people whose grandparents never had it so good.
I think the biggest difficulty is that when I'm here in America, there's a necessity of using English, so I really have a great sense of really wanting to learn, but unfortunately when I head back to Japan, the necessity vanishes and so does my enthusiasm about learning.
As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.
English is my second language, but in Hong Kong, they don't know that I'm from China. They think I'm from Hollywood because all the films they see are from here. China and Hong Kong are very different places, but they're starting to merge. Still the culture is very different.
When I took part in European leaders summits, it was sometimes unpleasant for me to hear Romanian, Polish, Portuguese, and Italian friends speak English, although I admit that on an informal basis, first contacts can be made in this language. Nevertheless, I will defend everywhere the use of the French language.
I have an English identity and a French identity. When I'm in France, I'm more outgoing. And the French part of me cooks, whereas the English part of me writes.
One thing that I miss because we spend a lot of time in America is English food, like cooked breakfast and Sunday dinners.
We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
Many great horror stories are period pieces and English actors have a facility for historic characters.
Sometimes I feel I can't quite master my written and spoken Spanish, because I'm too much a student of English. I would need another lifetime to learn it.
Oh, I think country has changed tremendously. I think country has totally changed. Country music when I was a kid was Hank Williams. If you put Hank and Elvis together, there wasn't that musical difference. But as the Beatles showed up and the English invasion, I think country music got pretty far away from rock n' roll.
My early novels were very understated and English. Fourteen years ago, I met and married my American husband, and as I learned more about his background and culture, I became interested in using American voices.
We still have a tradition certainly in English television; it's faded a bit in the last five years, but we still have a tradition where the important thing is the quality and the challenging nature of the programming.
The themes Poe used were universal and timeless. As long as the English language exists at all, we will be able to appreciate what he did. It will not age! It will not become dated!
I wanted to be an English teacher. I wanted to do it for the corduroy jackets with patches on the side. When I got to college, as I was walking across campus one day, I ripped off a little flyer for this sketch-comedy group. It ended up being one of the greatest things I've ever done.
In 1986, I was attacked in the street as I helped Neil Mullarkey from the Comedy Store Players to put up posters. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time - midnight - and we were English. I got kicked in the head.
Latinos are learning English. That doesn't mean that they should sacrifice their original language or that they should give up this in-betweeness that is Spanglish.
Yeah, Wacko Jacko, where did that come from? Some English tabloid. I have a heart and I have feelings. I feel that when you do that to me. It's not nice.
I'm a mongrel in the sense that I'm Spanish, English, Latino, Jewish, north, south - all these things are mixed in me.
My dad's French, and I spent my summers in France growing up. So I speak French fluently, and obviously, I speak English because I was raised in New York, and I grew up here.
In the past when I was in Hollywood, I was like a dog. I felt humiliated. My English was not good. People would even ask me 'Jackie Who?'.
The heart of the matter seems to me to be the direct interaction between one's making a poem in English and a poem in the language that one understands and values. I don't see how you can do it otherwise.
An English summer's day is wonderful, but sometimes you have to look hard to find one!
Far from being the product of a democratic revolution and of an opposition to English institutions, the constitution of the United States was the result of a powerful reaction against democracy, and in favor of the traditions of the mother country.
Why on earth do we want closer connection with England? We have little in common with English people except our language. We are fast becoming an entirely different people.
My dad is a minister, and my mum is a worker with the less fortunate and the disabled. They're Nigerian natives. Their first language is Yoruba, and their second language is English.
Being born white in South Africa or anywhere in the empire and Commonwealth automatically conferred this special status. You had no problem finding a place to live, a job, trade union membership, access to social services. Being white, speaking English, you were accepted as English, entitled to all the rights of citizenship.
People are disappointed when they hear my American accent because they regard 'The Police' as an English band but I've clung to my American-ness all the way.
Someone's just told me the English are still trying to take over the United States - is that true?
Verse comedy is interesting to me because of the challenge of writing in rhymed couplets, which is not a form that's usually amenable to English, yet to me it gives great possibility for comedy.
I am not accustomed to pay fulsome compliments to the English, by telling them that they are superior to all the world; but this I can say, that they do not deserve the name of cowards.
Things they don't understand always cause a sensation among the English.
I was more excited than scared, at the opportunity to work in an English movie.
I'd love to be a part of 'Star Wars.' I'd be a Sith, of course - I'm English! We've got the voice, and it's perfect for the bad guys.
I was always an avid reader of books. My vocabulary, my English are all thanks to that reading habit. Reading keeps me grounded. I came from a very middle class family - poor, in fact.
The druidical claims for Stonehenge seem to belong to that bonkers-but-persistent strand of Englishness that believes there is something particularly mystical about the English themselves, who were clearly a chosen people.
