Foreigners Quotes

“The joy of knowing a foreign language is inexpressible. I find it really difficult to express such joy in my mother tongue.”

“Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.”

“I have always thought foreigners with their unusual skin colours, mad languages and ignorant customs absolutely hilarious, and I think it's a shame that in recent years its become unfashionable to poke fun at them. I certainly don't think they themselves ever minded it.”

“Perhaps, like most of us in a foreign country, he was incapable of placing people, selecting a frame for their picture, as he would at home; therefore all Americans had to be judged in a pretty equal light, and on this basis his companions appeared to be tolerable examples of local color and national character.”

“We are all 'foreigners' to [the remainder of: the human race minus our countrymen].”

“...if one is to confer successfully with foreigners, it is essential to know their ways of thinking and be able to put oneself in their place.”

“I didn't plan it," she said. "I hoped that we would both just know when it was time... That we'd have one of those moments. Like in the movies, foreign movies, when something small happens, something almost imperceptible, and it changes everything. Like there's a man and a woman having breakfast... and the man reaches for the jam, and the woman says, "I thought you didn't like jam," and the man says, "I didn't. Once.""Or maybe it isn’t even obvious. Maybe he reaches for the jam, and she just looks at him like she doesn't know him anymore. Like, in the moment he reached for that jar, she couldn't recognize him."After breakfast, he'll go for a walk, and she'll go to their room and pack a slim brown suitcase. She'll stop on the sidewalk and wonder whether she should say good-bye, whether she should leave a note. But she won't. She'll just get into the taxi and go."He knows as soon as he turns onto their walk that she's gone. But he doesn't turn back. He doesn't regret a single day they spent together, including this one. Maybe he finds one of her ribbons on the stairs...”

“New York presented a paradox. While foreigners thought of New York has the symbol of America, many Americans viewed the city with some suspicion as the country's most foreign.”

“One believed what one was told to believe, what it made sense to believe. Unless one was a foreigner, of course, or a philosopher.”