Who of English speech, bred to the traditions of his race, does not recognize Hamlet in his 'inky cloak' at a glance? Not to know him would argue one's self untaught in the chief glories of his language.
Do I have to see movies and television about the English throne or the Holocaust every year? There are multiple multi-million dollar movies with the same backdrop. But our Holocaust - meaning Latino - aren't ever told.
An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke - although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness.
My parents were born in Norfolk and spent their early years working in the big houses of that rural English county, my mother as a cook and my father as a handyman and chauffeur.
When I was in college, I did do some writing of poetry, somewhat inspired, I think at that time, by Carl Sandburg, because English was still relatively new to me, and Sandburg, of course, wrote in a very easy-to-understand, very colloquial and informal manner.
You know, even growing up going to school, I had teachers that were against bilingual teaching. I never understood that. My parents always had me speak Spanish first knowing I was going to speak English in school.
The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the decent obscurity of a learned language.
I never had much education in English poetry as such.
I am just like 99% of my friends in France, who say on their resume they can speak fluent English. In reality, they can't even count up to three.
My dad's Nigerian, and I remember going to Nigeria, and all of these kids and adults and everyone in-between knew who TuPac was. They had TuPac t-shirts, TuPac posters, TuPac cassettes... everyone knew TuPac, and sometimes that was the only English that they spoke, was TuPac lyrics.
For over ten years I always had, but I don't speak English.
When I was about 13 or 14, I had an English teacher who made a deal with me that I could get out of doing all of the year's regular work if I would write a short story a week and on Friday read it to the class.
Most English houses, grand or small, nestle in an intimate pastoral setting.
I remember once saying in a television interview that the only things I hadn't been in were the opera and the ballet. Two days later, I got a call from Lord Harewood, of the English National Opera, saying "Would you like to be in 'Ariadne auf Naxos?'"
I'd been trying for a while to get parts that weren't just the English bad guy, so it was quite refreshing to be playing someone who was a compassionate, decent guy.
Printing ballots in multiple languages costs millions of dollars every year. It also discourages immigrants from integrating into American society and gaining the benefits that come from speaking English.
I love the English. My God, they brought us 'Benny Hill,' 'Monty Python,' 'The Office,' Neville Chamberlain.
I don't like being flattered. It doesn't suit my English sensibilities. Remember, we are the great country of understatement.
Although an increasing proportion of the Hispanic population is foreign-born - about half of adults in this group - English proficiency is and should remain a requirement for citizenship.
English majors understand human nature better than economists do.
English culture is highly literary-based.
My dad is an English teacher, and my mom is a textiles artist. My parents made my sisters and me feel that if we wanted to pursue something creative, it could be done. They've always been supportive of everything from the beginning.
When I began my career as a flight attendant, I was a 21-year-old with a B.A. in English and stars in her eyes. I wanted to see every city in the world. I wanted to have adventures that, I hoped, would fuel a writing career some day.
It's not often that an English drummer gets an Oscar. So I'm very, very proud of that.
It was a somber place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter. Life, as I discovered, holds no more wretched occupation than trying to make the English laugh.
Over 90 percent of parents in Puerto Rico want their children to be totally fluent in English.
These examples of the lack of simplicity in English and French, all appearances to the contrary, could be multiplied almost without limit and apply to all national languages.
My family was blue collar, a middle-class kind of thing. My father was born in Detroit, Italian-American. My mother is English. She acted on the stage with Diana Dors. Her parents were French.
I had a very tough childhood. I came here from Italy in the '70s and didn't speak a word of English, so the kids at school tormented me. Truly, it was horrifying the names they called me, and the teachers never really did a thing to stop it.
If there's anything I'd hate as a son-in-law, it's an actor; and if there's anything I think I'd hate worse than an actor as a son-in-law, it's an English actor.
There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.
I must have got my detailed, obsessive streak from my father, who was an English teacher, because my mother wasn't like me at all.
My father was a professor of civil engineering at MIT, and my mother taught high school English.
There is no myth relative to the manners and customs of the English that in my experience is more tenaciously held by the ordinary Frenchman than that the sale of a wife in the market-place is an habitual and an accepted fact in English life.
We are Bayern Munich and English teams always have trouble as soon as they leave the island.
