Vieja In English Quotes

'The Sound of Things Falling' may be a page turner, but it's also a deep meditation on fate and death. Even in translation, the superb quality of Vasquez's prose is evident, captured in Anne McLean's idiomatic English version. All the novel's characters are well imagined, original and rounded. ~ Edmund White

It was a clear autumn day Sunday in 1876; Vincent van Gogh, twenty-three years old, left the English boarding school where he was teaching to give a sermon at a small Methodist church in Richmond, a humble London suburb. Standing in front of the lectern, he felt like a lost soul emerging from the dark cave in which he had been buried.

The sermon, which survives among Vincent's collected letters, reiterates universal ideas and is not an outstanding example of the art of homiletics. Nevertheless, his words grew out of his tormented life and had an intense emotional charge. Preaching to the congregation, he was also preaching to himself -- and of himself. The images he used were the same as those that were to be given powerful expression in his pictures.

The text chosen for the sermon was Psalm 119:19, 'I am a stranger on the earth, hide not Thy commandments from me.' ~ Albert J. Lubin

Words aren't just sounds or shapes. They're meaning. That's what language is: a protocol for transferring meaning. When you learn English, you train your brain to react in a particular way to particular sounds. As it turns out, the protocol can be hacked. ~ Max Barry

CHRISTMAS FUSS IN BARBADOS IN THE 70'S
Ginger immersed in the brewed sorrel was always tempting. There was also the aroma of the red English apples on the table, and ripe golden apples smelling heavenly. The smell of the new cloth, from the curtains reminded us that it was Christmas. There was also the smell of the oil skin tablecloth on our varnished table, the smell of new sheets on our bed, and not forgetting the smell of the big shaddock which sat in the center of the table. ~ Charmaine J. Forde

Music came first and I started to jam with people I couldn't communicate in their language. Then, because I could make friends thanks to music, they started to talk to me. Then I started to learn English. ~ Hiromi

I'd been in college studying English creative writing and history when I made the decision to join the Marines in the runup to the Iraq war. ~ Phil Klay

He was a noisy robust little man with a gleam of real talent concealed in the messy obscurity of his verse. But because he did his best to shock people with his monstrous mass of otiose words (he was the inventor of the "submental grunt" as he called it), his main output seems now so nugatory, so false, so old-fashioned (super-modern things have a queer knack of dating much faster than others) that his true value is only remembered by a few scholars who admire the magnificent translations of English poems made by him at the very outset of his literary career, - ~ Vladimir Nabokov

In about 9th grade, an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school, so I did on a whim. I got accepted. Then I got accepted at the Julliard School, and by then, I was serious about it. ~ Ving Rhames

I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions. ~ Michael Cunningham

Can you read and write in English?""English, Spanish and Dutch," she said. "My French is serviceable, too.""What do you know," the older man said, looking surprised. "I didn't realize you could study that here." It always seemed to amaze foreigners that they were not all running around in loincloths, praying to the rain gods. ~ Silvia Moreno-Garcia

And, swearing that he'd let no English passers-by tell him what HE was going to wear, he stalked toward Piccadilly and into a hat-shop he remembered having seen. He'd just glance in there. Certainly they couldn't SELL him anything! English people couldn't sell like Americans! So he entered the shop and came out with a new gray felt hat for town, a new brown one for the country, a bowler, a silk evening hat, and a cap, and he was proud of himself for having begun the Europeanization which he wasn't going to begin. ~ Sinclair Lewis

The English make bonny speeches, but they run to an awful wee man. And the Kerrs . . . there's something unchancy about a left-handed race.'

'I'm right-handed,' offered Will Scott.

'Aye.'

'And six foot three in my hose.'

'Uh-huh. I didna say I wanted to run up a beanpole. Nor have I heard hide nor hair of a speech, bonny or otherwise.'

'I'm saving it,' he said austerely, 'till I've the theme for it.'

'Oh!' said Grizel Beaton (Younger) of Buccleuch, with a squeal of delight. 'Will Scott! Are we having our first married set-to? ~ Dorothy Dunnett

At the teasing penetration, my hips jerk upward. Wes chuckles and eases his finger deeper, until the pad of it is stroking my prostate. My entire body trembles. Tingles. Burns. He spends a maddeningly long time torturing me with his mouth and finger - no, fingers. He's got two inside me now, rubbing that sensitive place and bringing white dots to my eyes. "Wes," I murmur. He raises his head. His gray eyes are smoky with desire. "Hmmm?" he says lazily. "Stop fucking teasing me and start fucking fucking me," I rasp. "Fucking fucking you? Did you really need two fuckings?" "One's an adverb and one's a verb." My voice is as tight as every muscle in my body. I'm about to go up in flames if he doesn't make me come. His laughter warms my thigh. "I love the English language, dude. It's so creative." "Are we really having this conversation right now?" I growl when his teeth sink into my inner thigh. His fingers are still lodged inside me, but no longer moving. ~ Sarina Bowen

I was born abroad, but my parents were both English. Still, those few years of separation, and then coming back to England as an outsider, did give me an ability to see the country in a slightly detached way. I suppose I was made aware of what Englishness actually is because I only became immersed in it later in life. ~ Rachel Cusk

What is going on with you, Rev?"

He rubs his eyes. "I don't know. I'm just tired."

I think of how he sat in the hospital with me, saying nothing. His silence was more supportive than anything he could have said.

I don't know how to do that in return. Maybe I can offer something else, though. I pull out my phone and do a quick search, then turn it around and slide it across the bed.

He doesn't reach for it. "Did she send more?"

"No. It's a poem I had to read for English. Read it."

He looks up, and the expression on his face is exactly the one I'd wear if he suddenly said, Hey bro, read this poem. "What?"

"Just read it. I think you'll like it. ~ Brigid Kemmerer

Okay, listen up, dudes. We have to book. Yesterday, when I find you guys are, like, AWOL? I, like, freak. Yelling at everybody–where are they, why did you let them leave–the hotel people are, like, whaaaa? Anyway, I pack up all your stuff, figuring I may never see the place again, and down in the lobby I find my man Arif. I'm, like, help me, and he takes all of our stuff to this launch–and then we're halfway across the sea when Arif gets this radio message, and he's all excited, but I don't know what he's saying until he's, like, 'POLICE!' in English. And we see these cop cars and somebody's getting a big old boat, so we're, like, sayonara, only in Indonesian, and we tool out into this boat-traffic jam to try to loose them, and I'm hearing these radio reports that are half English–there's been a fire and somebody's dead, yada yada, and I'm totally wigging out–Why did you do that? Why did you and your sister leave me in a hotel without even a note? ~ Peter Lerangis

I want for India complete independence in the full English sense of that English term. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I had to settle for two of the most inadequate words in the English language, words to pale to express what I needed to say. Thank you. ~ Lilith Saintcrow

In 2008, an Australian company commissioned a study to find out exactly how much people fear public speaking. The survey of more than one thousand people found that 23 percent feared public speaking more than death itself! As Jerry Seinfeld once said, most people attending a funeral would rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy!
I can relate to those people because I feared speaking in front of a class or group of people more than anything else when I was a kid. In fact, I dropped speech in high school because when I signed up for it I thought it was a grammar class for an English credit. When I found out it actually required giving an oral presentation, I didn't want any part of it! After hearing the overview of the class on the first day, I got out of my seat and walked toward the door; the teacher asked me where I was going. We had a brief meeting in the hall, in which she informed me that nobody ever dropped her class. After a meeting with the principal, I dropped the class, but on the condition that I might be called upon in the near future to use my hunting and fishing skills. I thought the principal was joking--until I was called upon later that year during duck season to pick ducks during recess! I looked at it as a fair trade. ~ Jase Robertson

It is best if the guard is in love with America and wants to overawe the American by being a premium guard. This kind of guard thinks that he will encounter the American again one day in America, and that the American will offer to take him to a Chicago Bulls game, and buy him blue jeans and white
bread and delicate toilet paper. This guard dreams of speaking English
without an accent and obtaining a wife with an unmalleable bosom. This guard will confess that he does not love where he lives.
The other kind of guard is also in love with America, but he will hate the American for being an American. This is worst. This guard knows he will never go to America, and knows that he will never meet the American again. He will steal from the American, and terror the American, only to teach that he can. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

It is claimed that the United States gets the cleanest and purest tea in the market, and certainly it is too good to warrant the nervous apprehension which strains and dilutes it into nothingness. The English do not strain their tea in the fervid fashion we do. They like to see a few leaves dawdling about the cup. They like to know what they are drinking. ~ Agnes Repplier

Occasionally I write a small piece or the odd lecture in English, and I teach in English, but my fiction is always written in German. ~ W.G. Sebald

The word "kenning" comes from the Old Norse verb kenna, which is also a "seeing=knowing" metaphor, meaning "to know, recognize, or perceive." The etymology survives in words meaning "to know" in various Scandinavian languages as well as in German and Dutch. Kenna is also the source of the English "can" as well as the somewhat arcane "ken," as found in the expression "beyond my ken," meaning "beyond my knowledge. ~ James Geary

Increasingly, corporate executives who don't speak Japanese are coming into Japan. Unlike their predecessors, they expect their employees to be able to communicate in English. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

I usually just speak in English when I'm on the basketball court. For some reason, my mind never even tried to cross any other language when I'm playing basketball. ~ Dikembe Mutombo

Cabinet is a conscious, explicit attempt to portray the Doctor himself as myth. "He's a mischief, a leprechaun, a boojum," says one character, bookseller and collector of incunabula, Syme. "The Doctor is a myth. He's straight out of Old English folklore, typical trickster figure really."29 Neither part of an ongoing narrative, nor specifically located within the series' past, Cabinet is in a position to challenge the portrayal of the Doctor. ~ Anthony Burdge, Jessica Burke, Kristine Larsen

This character's entirely invented, and the woman that I interviewed wouldn't recognize herself, or really anything about herself, in this book, which she hasn't read, because she doesn't read English. ~ Arthur Golden

Emotional trauma is something we should be forced to take a formal course in during high school, sandwiched between advanced statistics and AP English. ~ Wendy Plump

I had to read Wuthering Heights for English and I never enjoyed a book in all my life as much as that one. ~ Marlon Brando

Contemporary fantasists all bow politely to Lord Tennyson and Papa Tolkien, then step around them to go back to the original texts for inspiration
and there are a lot of those texts. We have King Arthur and his gang in English; we've got Siegfried and Brunhild in German; Charlemagne and Roland in French; El Cid in Spanish; Sigurd the Volsung in Icelandic; and assorted 'myghtiest Knights on lyfe' in a half-dozen other cultures. Without shame, we pillage medieval romance for all we're worth. ~ David Eddings

Punctuation is important, but the rules are changing. Spelling is important today in a way that it wasn't when Shakespeare was a boy. Grammar isn't set in stone. ~ Gyles Brandreth

I think I'd like a short, direct answer to every question,' I replied, laughing. He raised an eyebrow at the foolishness of my flippant response and then shook his head slowly. 'Do you know the English philosopher Bertrand Russell? Have you read any of his books?' 'Yeah. I read some of his stuff - at university, and in prison.' 'He was a favourite of my dear Mr. Mackenzie Esquire,' Khader smiled. 'I do not often agree with Bertrand Russell's conclusions, but I do like the way he arrives at them. Anyway, he once said, Anything that can be put in a nutshell should remain there. And I do agree with him about that. ~ Gregory David Roberts

Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students; he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to, or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis's comments on them, and burned them. ~ A.S. Byatt

The Second Table of the Ten Commandments reads in Hebrew something like this: 'Don't kill; don't be vile; don't steal; don't tell lies about others; don't envy any man his wife or house or animals, or anything he has.' This sounds shockingly wrong in English. For the English genius, religion is solemn and stately; Canterbury Cathedral, not a shul. The grand slow march of "Thou Shalt Nots" is exactly right. Religion for the Jews is intimate and colloquial, or it is nothing. ~ Herman Wouk