Nineteenth-century English literature I know; 19th-century sewage systems, not so much.
English country life is more like Chekhov than 'The Archers' or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.
I prefer the finesse of French humour. English humour is more scathing, more cruel, as illustrated by Monty Python and Little Britain.
I love to read. I was in AP English in high school, and we were assigned books every few months. 'Moby Dick' and 'The Great Gatsby' are two of my favorite ones.
Most Muslim women know it is fear and curiosity that cause people to stare. They know it is ignorance and stereotypes that cause people to suppose that a piece of material covering the hair strips a woman of the ability to speak English, pursue a career, work a remote control.
The whole business of reading English Literature in two years, to know it in any reputable sense of the word - let alone your learning to write English - is, in short, impossible.
I tend to curse in French more often than I do in English.
I'm not very good at standard English.
I did not think I would be able to do myself justice if I had to speak to the players in English. I would not be able to get my emotions and feelings across.
When I started writing seriously in high school, English was the language I had at my disposal - my Spanish was domestic, colloquial, and not particularly literary or sophisticated.
I was born in Santa Monica but brought up abroad so I don't use English much.
Surely one advantage of traveling is that, while it removes much prejudice against foreigners and their customs, it intensifies tenfold one's appreciation of the good at home, and, above all, of the quietness and purity of English domestic life.
I wish I could adjust my voice, but it's just what's happened to me. It's because I've lived abroad for a long time, and my wife is English and my kids all have English accents, and every voice I hear is English. I've never intentionally changed my accent at all.
I had decent but not great grades in high school because I was highly motivated in some subjects, like the arts, drama, English, and history, but in math and science I was a screw-up. Wooster saw something in me, and I really flourished there. I got into theatre, took photography and painting classes.
My father is a poet. He's a literary giant of this country - writes in Hindi - and also quite unique because he has a Ph.D. in English Literature. He taught at Harvard University, which is one of the most prominent universities in the country.
I was a supporting character in other people's lives, which seemed right and familiar to me. I was also an outsider: English in the U.S., American in England, dogged yet comforted by that familiar feeling of alien-ness, which occupied that space where my sense of self should have been.
It's funny because I'm so used to acting in English that any time I have these moments where I have to speak Russian, it definitely takes a different part of my brain to pull it off, but it's always nice and fun.
I sang in English my whole life; I just happened to decide that I had a passion for Latin music, and I wanted to jump into Latin music first.
I feel comfortable in Spanish, I chat like a parrot, but I don't have the confidence in Spanish that I do in English.
I could never muster the courage to speak to girls in my college in Pune. Most of them were Parsis and spoke English. I came from a village and could barely converse in English.
English dialogues are always just what you need and nothing more - like something out of Hemingway. In Italian and in French, dialogues are always theatrical, literary. You can do more with it.
I like Yorkshire Tea - very strong and English.
Well, I'm trilingual myself. I am, I know how to speak Spanish, English, obviously, and I speak pretty good Ebonics.
I grew up listening to a lot of Malaysian pop music, which is kind of like a mixture of traditional and pop... I was also listening to a lot of English music as well.
You can get this feeling of the English or Scottish or Irish or Welsh fairy, but it is by nature very elusive. It would be possible to pin down a German fairy, but the English one just vanishes, becomes the shadow under the trees.
The three most dreaded words in the English language are 'negative cash flow'.
Just because I take my music international doesn't mean I have to sing in English. I will continue to sing in Punjabi, Hindi, Gujarati, and Tamil. I want to represent my own country through its own languages.
'Out' was my real breakthrough, the novel that became a hit in Japan and sold a lot of books, so it was sort of an obvious choice for being the first book to be translated into English.
The paradox of the English country house is that its state of permanent decline, the fact that its heyday is always behind it, is part of the seduction, just as it is part of the seduction of books in general.
I get very annoyed when people think I'm nice or diffident or a polite English gentleman. I'm a nasty piece of work, and people should know that.
I had a real yearning to make use of the opportunities I had at school. When I heard about the gap year of teaching English at a Tibetan monastery, I knew I had to do something about it really quickly, otherwise it was going to get allocated.
I learned my English from Keith Spurgeon. He had some small children, and I was young, too, and so we spoke the language together, and it was fantastic.
What it takes is to actually write: not to think about it, not to imagine it, not to talk about it, but to actually want to sit down and write. I'm lucky I learned that habit a really long time ago. I credit my mother with that. She was an English teacher, but she was a writer.
Banjos are used in Celtic, English folk music and obviously American music. But not that much in pop music. But it's more versatile than people realise it to be. It's a beautiful instrument, very rhythmic and melodic. You can do anything with it.
Peter Fleming was a famous English traveler, explorer and adventurer, whose non-fiction books were hugely successful. My father owned signed copies of all of them - he and Peter Fleming had become acquainted over some detail of set design at the Korda film studio in Shepperton - and I had read each of them with breathless adolescent excitement.
The more players who come through the academy and make it into the first team, that's what we want. Not just for the club but for the country. If they're young English players coming through, that's fantastic. I'm happy to be part of that.