I was born in England - though both of my parents are American - and there's something about the 'Muppets' where they have this combination of English and American humor.
In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part, the Indian part. The part of me that loves London, and the part that longs for Bombay. And at my typewriter, alone, I could indulge this.
I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.
The brank, or scold's bridle, was unknown in America in its English shape: though from colonial records we learn that scolding women were far too plentiful, and were gagged for that annoying and irritating habit.
Until the June 1967 war I was completely caught up in the life of a young professor of English. Beginning in 1968, I started to think, write, and travel as someone who felt himself to be directly involved in the renaissance of Palestinian life and politics.
I remember, in school during English lessons, I would ask the teacher what were the most difficult books to read, and when she'd say 'Ulysses' or something, I'd run off to the library to check out a copy, eager to attempt the most difficult mountain.
It's important to me to work in my own language now and then. I love English, but you can never learn to master a foreign language if you're not brought up with it.
I always serve the writer first because I'm English trained, even though I'm American.
I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.
English is necessary as at present original works of science are in English. I believe that in two decades times original works of science will start coming out in our languages. Then we can move over like the Japanese.
It even has the same phraseology as the English orders of knighthood, companions and this sort of thing.
Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland.
We were very kindly received by the English merchants to whom my companion had letters, and we set ourselves to learn what was the real state of things in Mexico.
I spent ten years in London; I trained there. But because I started in English, it kind of feels the most natural to me, to act in English, which is a strange thing. My language is Spanish; I grew up in Argentina. I speak to my family in Spanish, but if you were to ask me what language I connect with, it'd be English in some weird way.
We like being English, but we're not that patriotic.
Ebonics - or black English, as I prefer to call it - is one of a great many dialects of English. And so English comes in a great many varieties, and black English is one of them.
Tim Berners-Lee, the 44-year-old English physicist who created the World Wide Web, is precisely the kind of hero that a relatively simple invention with profound social and economic consequences should lay claim to. He is not just creative but democratic, diplomatic, polite and generous with credit and praise.
Playing a woman in the tech world never crossed my mind as a thing until people started bringing it up all time. People act like it's unicorns speaking English all of a sudden.
I spend more time learning about Buddhism than English, which is why my English today is still bad.
'Marielena' was a wonderful experience that so many people still remember today. It challenged me to practice my Spanish. Having been born and raised in Miami, English was very much my dominant language!
The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.
When I'm studying English I love to watch 'Friends' or 'Nikita.'
Move beyond the educated elite, and the great majority in most countries outside Europe don't speak English.
The likes of Frank Lampard and John Terry at Chelsea, English players with proper status at a club, they're going to be like the dodo bird. Extinct.
I haven't taught since 2004, but I taught high school English for seven years, primarily at a place called Haddonfield Memorial, which is in a very well-to-do-community in Southern New Jersey.
The English, the plain English, of the politest address of a gentleman to a lady is, I am now, dear Madam, your humble servant: Pray be so good as to let me be your Lord and Master.
Our last jam session was this past Christmas. Dad played his harmonica, mom sang in English and Italian, and I played guitar. I'm so happy that we could share that musical experience for one last time.
The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.
I board with a poor Scotchman: his wife can talk scarce any English.
One of the problems with any kind of talking about the media landscape is that we've just been through an unusually stable period in which, for fifty years, English language media was centered in three cities - London, New York, and Los Angeles - around a very stable group of people working in a relatively stable set of media.
Everything is possible for an eccentric, especially when he is English.
It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.
I was sick and tired of being an English actor who did a lot of American movies because I was cheap and good.
You know, I was a kid who had difficulty speaking English when I first immigrated. But in my head, when I read a book, I spoke English perfectly. No one could correct my Spanish. And I think that I retreated to books as a way, you know, to be, like, masterful in a language that was really difficult for me for many years.
Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my songs in Spanish. I am the same Shakira in English as I am in Spanish.
My father became the technical advisor for 'The Desert Fox,' with James Mason as Rommel. They wanted an Aussie who had been in North Africa with the English, and found my father on the Pasadena police force.
