John Irving Quotes

Traveling in Europe made me understand that America has an island mentality: No one exists except us. There's a whole other world out there, but most Americans - all they know is America, the marketing plan.

No doubt, to a man of sense, travel offers advantages. As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own.

I had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves.

I've never been in any country for more than four years, and I'm learning different languages all the time. It gives you a different attitude.

I've only ever known growing up across different countries - to me it's just fun.

Travel early and travel often. Live abroad, if you can. Understand cultures other than your own. As your understanding of other cultures increases, your understanding of yourself and your own culture will increase exponentially.

He who never leaves his country is full of prejudices.

The United States is very good at understanding itself, and very bad at understanding others.

When you go out of your country and meet people, you get a wider perspective.

It's important that we have a global perspective and look abroad and learn from our neighbors.

I understand different cultures because I have travelled a lot.

Everyone can help. We can educate ourselves and our children about other countries and cultures.

If the various groups in America had been less selfish and had permitted different representatives from the groups to travel into foreign countries, and broaden their own scope, and come back and educate the movements they represented, not only would this have made the groups to which they belonged more enlightened and more worldly in the international sense, but it also would have given the independent African states abroad a better understanding of the groups in the United States, and what they stand for, what they represent.

I think Americans suffer for their lack of travel, awareness of the world. It has horribly warped our sense of place in the scheme of things.

When a traveler returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath traveled altogether behind him.

And what should they know of England who only England know?

Americans don't bother to notice anybody else in the world.

I've always dreamed of getting to know the women of other countries better. When I was a boy, I remember, I used to get angry at the thought that I did not know German or American or Swedish women.

We must travel; we must go to foreign parts. We must see how the engine of society works in other countries, and keep free and open communication with what is going on in the minds of other nations, if we really want to be a nation again.

Being exposed to different production environments in Korea, Japan and the U.S. was a great experience, and each system allows you to quench your thirst in a different way.

All I know is that every time I go to Africa, I am shaken to my core.

I grew up in Africa surrounded by a lot of culture. It's made me aware that the world is a big place.

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.

Good authors mature over time: it does take awhile. Travel abroad and learn to live in other cultures. That's one of the things about teaching abroad.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.