Sufjan Stevens Quotes

I remember hearing other models talk about going to castings for Givenchy, and I was like, 'What are they saying?' And then I realized and was like, 'Oh, the Give-in-chee one.' I had been calling it Give-in-chee the whole time. I was shocked.

People are possibly not spelling 'Leicester' correctly everywhere round the globe, but they are at least saying it correctly now.

They spell it da Vinci and pronounce it da Vinchy. Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.

When I was growing up, I didn't know who Jewish people were, what it was to be Jewish.

The great thing about not being American is that you don't assume you know what a Southern accent sounds like, so you have to be specific.

People are always asking me about eskimos, but there are no eskimos in Iceland.

Always when you go to a new country and they teach you bad words, you just say them without knowing the value and people look at you because you didn't know that value of them.

I am a chilled-out person. But if people call me by my name, I hope they pronounce it right. I get called Baron, sometimes Varun, and my surname is often changed to Sobit.

I grew up in Stoneham, a little suburb of Boston. It's pronounced 'Stone 'em' because Massachusetts doesn't bend to the will of 'how letters are supposed to be said.'

I remember when we did our first read-through, Sonny [Bono] looks at the script and he goes, "Okay, I'll see you guys later. Chai-ay-oh!" And I said, "It's ciao! Aren't you Italian? C-i-a-o doesn't spell 'chai-ay-oh.'" Sonny's dead, so he won't be embarrassed if I tell that story.

I am very up front about about my inability to pronounce things correctly. I said real-uh-tor instead of realtor until about five years ago. I just admit I have no idea how to say Theyskens! Don't be intimidated. Just be honest!

The biggest thing about growing up in Canada is you know that Los Angeles and New York are not the only places in the world. They're not the only places where brilliant acting happens.

I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom.

Misunderstanding a culture's symbols is a common root of predujice.

Some words have multiple meanings. Scholastic, aware that I'm allergic to preservatives, kindly got someone to translate the phrase "I can only eat food without preservatives" into Italian. They warned me, however, as they taught me how to say it, that the Italian word for "preservatives" is the same as the word for "condom." So that I should be careful how I look when I say it.

For 200 years, the West has been so dominant in the world that it's not really needed to understand other cultures, other civilizations. Because, at the end of the day, it could, if necessary by force, get its own way.

In America there is really very little knowledge of the literature of the rest of the world. Of the literature of Latin America, yes, But that's not all that different in inspiration from that of America, or of Europe. One must go further. You don't even have to go too far in terms of geography - you can start with the Native Americans and listen to their poetry.

My mom says I'm destined to be the sort of man who uses big words but pronounces them incorrectly.

I came from a very comfortable, middle-class family living in Highland Park, Illinois.Really growing up in a Jewish community with a fabulous public school.

I think everybody that grows up in Florida, you've got a little chip on your shoulder. It's not as bad as people think it is, but it's pretty bad. When you go to other places you're just like, "Oh, god. What was that about?"

The Family of Man is more than 3 billion strong. It lives in more than 100 nations. Most of its members are not white. Most of them are not Christians. Most of them know nothing about free enterprise or due process of law or the Australian ballot.

Happy Cinco de Mayo. If you don't know what that means, maybe you're a little out of touch - or maybe you're the governor of Arizona.

I sometimes think the contemporary white American is more culturally deprived than the Indian.

American cultural institutions seem so bent on preserving the values of "Western civilization," the mythical "Whitetown," that welearn about one another's cultures the same way we learn about sex: in the streets.

People a thousand years from now - this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the 20th century. This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our living and in our dying.