Antonio Banderas Quotes

When you introduce something new to a country, you want to do it right. Generally, that means you have to do it yourself.

Compared with U.S. cities, Japanese cities bend over backward to help foreigners. The countryside is another matter.

Americans are people who prefer the Continent to their own country, but refuse to learn its languages.

Even when well translated. can we really understand what other cultures are talking about?

Whenever I'm around Spanish people, I'm kind of like a fly on the wall.

When I worked with Chinese crew for the first time, including production unit, spot boys etc, everyone was so affectionate, sweet and kind.

I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S.

It's fascinating when you're from another place, but you don't speak the language.

Globalisation has obliterated distance, not just physically but also, most dangerously, mentally. It creates the illusion of intimacy when, in fact, the mental distances have changed little. It has concertinaed the world without engendering the necessary respect, recognition and tolerance that must accompany it.

My new play 'Chinglish,' which will go to Broadway, is about a white American businessman who goes to a provincial capital in China, hoping to make a deal there. It's bilingual. And it's about trying to communicate across language and cultural barriers.

But I do not want to use Hungarian verses for British people.

I don't know if my sense of humor goes over Americans' heads.

When in Rome, I must do as the Romans do. When in America, make Bikram copyright and trademark.

The only problem was that I couldn't communicate with Dario. He speaks Italian and I don't. We had a translator the whole time. I just felt that something was lost with the go between. He was a delightful man, but I wish we could have spoken the same language.

The biggest lesson I've learned by living abroad for the last four years is the importance of communication.

I decided that Europeans and Americans are like men and women: they understand each other worse, and it matters less, than either of them suppose.

Honestly, I'm cool with everyone, and people pick up on that. I'd say, 'I'm not gay, but it's all good.' It's kind of like going to Paris when you don't know the language; some Americans get into trouble over there, but I'm just like, 'Sorry, I don't speak French.'

Where I'm from, we don't do the kiss-on-the-cheek thing. Sometimes we can feel a bit awkward in England. Someone needs to let me know what the rules are because I don't want to be rude. I need a little more etiquette coaching.

I said that when I looked at photographs of the firefighters who went into the Twin Towers, their faces looked to me like Irish faces. I hadn't yet learnt how careful outsiders have to be when talking about race in America, and I'd put my foot in it. Someone stood up and said aggressively, 'What do you mean by Irish faces?'

Regardless of whether you speak the language or are familiar with a culture, the picture should hold up.

Certainly, the foreigner the better.

He seems like an American at a carnival ball. He doesn't know the tune. He doesn't understand the lyrics, he doesn't have rhythm, he doesn't know how to dance, and he came without a costume.

Travelers never think that they are the foreigners

American audiences and European and Asian audiences are so different.

I have said no to many, many Day of the Dead projects in the past, about 10 or 15, because every time I heard a take it was from someone who didn't know the celebration.