I speak English, so I am no longer cute. My tongue itches for French.
I was born here in the States. I moved to Portugal when I was five. And then my parents put me in an English school.
The first article carrying Vonnegut's byline, 'This Business of Whistle Purchasing,' a lighthearted criticism of a school fund-raiser, was submitted at the urging of his sophomore English teacher.
I started off in England and very few people knew I was Australian. I mean, the clues were in the poems, but they didn't read them very carefully, and so for years and years I was considered completely part of the English poetry scene.
Your great country is wonderful at stealing pieces of history and using it for its own purposes, so there didn't seem to be anything particularly unusual about it but the English were incredibly exercised about it.
I suppose, counting back, if the Beatles had been influenced by music in the same length of time ago - you'd have to put that into better English for me, thank you - they would have been like a banjo orchestra. They would have been doing show tunes.
As a little girl living in the English countryside, I used to go running around in the forests, creating my own fairy tale.
The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.
President Bush gave his first-ever presidential radio address in both English and Spanish. Reaction was mixed, however, as people were trying to figure out which one was which.
I think maybe the English don't want to try something and look stupid, because they are a bit reserved.
I don't do Shakespeare. I don't talk in that kind of broken English.
Growing up in the English countryside, I feel like I'm in a Jane Austen novel when I walk around. I just feel comfortable and confident in those surroundings.
At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester's works and the little urn that contains my mother's ashes.
When the student has her voice under complete control, it is safe to take up the lyric repertoire of Mendelssohn, Old English Songs, etc. How simple and charming they are!
Russian subs are a bargain at $60,000. Unfortunately, none of the dials or instructions are in English.
Spanglish is the encounter: perhaps the word is marriage or divorce of English and Spanish, but also of Anglo and Hispanic civilizations - not only in the United States but in the entire continent and, perhaps, also in Spain.
I must have read every issue of 'Punch' published in the 20th century, and I think in the process I picked up the true voice of English humour - that amiable, fairly liberal, laconic voice which you find in something like 'Three Men in a Boat.'
I'd rather be thought as an international actress rather than a French one. Because I don't know what's coming up for me, my ambition is not to be typecast. So I'm working on my English accent, as well as my American one. I don't want to be like 'Okay, I'm French, and I want to succeed in Hollywood!'
It took me a year to really learn the American lingo. I really feel for people who are coming here and don't speak English at all. It must be hell.
Some people say I sound Australian. I guess it's all down to Miss Matthews, who taught me English when I was growing up in Dar es Salaam. Nearly everyone in Denmark speaks English, and TV shows are only ever subtitled, not dubbed.
The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.
I really like acting in English.
I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own.
Englishmen learn Christ's law best in English. Moses heard God's law in his own tongue; so did Christ's apostles.
Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn't answer the phone.
I've grown to love California: It's the dream of every English musician to come here and work in the sunshine. To walk up Sunset Boulevard, knowing you're going to make music - that's it.
I studied voice for three months to get rid of my English accent. I changed my hair to blonde. I knew I could be sexy if I had to.
Give immediate instruction to all your posts in said territory, under your direction, at no time and on no pretence to hoist, or suffer be hoisted, the English flag.
The English approach to ideas is not to kill them, but to let them die of neglect.
I had great English teachers in high school who first piqued my interest in Shakespeare. Each year, we read a different play - 'Othello,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet' - and I was the nerd in class who would memorize soliloquies just for the fun of it.
Everything that we inherit, the rain, the skies, the speech, and anybody who works in the English language in Ireland knows that there's the dead ghost of Gaelic in the language we use and listen to and that those things will reflect our Irish identity.
I was an English major at the University of Minnesota, and I was very shy, which many people misinterpreted as intelligence. On the basis of that wrong impression, I became the editor of the campus literary magazine.
I met my wife through playing golf. She is French and couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak French, so there was little chance of us getting involved in any boring conversations - that's why we got married really quickly.
Listen, here's the thing about an English degree - if you sat somebody down and asked them to make a list of the writers they admire over the last hundred years, see how many of them got a degree in English.
I do tend to be an analyzer. I'm an old English major from way back, so I do have fun tearing apart texts and trying to find the hidden secrets and the subtexts in there.
When I moved to L.A. and had my first meeting with my agents, they asked me what I wanted for my career. And I didn't speak English at the time, but I did say, 'I wanna be Ryan Gosling as a woman.' So I got very excited to play opposite him.
