Jay Parini Quotes

Capri on the Amalfi Coast in Italy is my ultimate holiday destination.

I went to study in Spain for a year after school. It was either that or Russian, so I went for the easy option. I love Spain and go quite regularly. I've done a bit of Spanish theatre.

I gasp for air if I don't get to breathe Italian air once a year.

When I was a senior in high school, I went to Ireland to study Irish Gaelic. And after one semester at Trinity College, I went way out to the west coast of Ireland and rented a little house by myself.

I want to go to college to study journalism. I want to speak French fluently, to travel. My mom was a journalist and it's in my blood.

When we were 15, my girlfriend Ruth Kaplan and I applied to the Universidad Ibero-Americana in Mexico City. We were accepted into a program that placed us with a lovely Mexican family. We lived with them for six weeks while studying Spanish poetry and Mexican anthropology.

I would love to take a road trip across Italy in an Aston Martin S Coupe.

Columbia University, where I went to study in 1993, insisted its undergraduates learn a foreign language, so I discovered French.

Six months after that, I left Taiwan, first for Hong Kong and then for mainland China, where I spent another three months studying still more Chinese and generally kicking around the country.

Every year, I send 1,000 students to China to study Chinese history, language, and culture.

I love Europe. I don't speak a lick of French, but I speak a bit of Italian. I can get through Italy better than I get through the rest of Europe.

I love revisiting, actually. I went back to the Philippines. I've done three films in the Philippines.

Almost every summer, my wife and I, now with two kids in tow, spend a couple of weeks in Italy.

For the two and a half years in Italy, I can be happy with what I did.

When I got to college, my sister was starting work, and she realized she had two weeks of vacation a year, so she called me and said, 'Go abroad.' So right after my freshman year, I went and I studied in Guatemala, and I studied in Kenya, and I studied in Italy, and it was incredible.

As a student I travelled around the Mediterranean - the Greek islands and Salerno on the south coast of Italy.

I loved Genoa. I had a good time there. I loved the sea. There was good weather and good cuisine.

I might move to Finland, at least for a while, to learn the language a bit better, 'cause you don't learn any language better than in the country itself.

I lived in Rome for about five or six months during Life Aquatic.

I've written a little bit in Germany.

I like to travel and explore new places and simply love trying new cuisines.

Two-thirds of us in the U.S. don't have a passport. I'm here to say that travel is the best, most mind-expanding thing we can do with our hard-earned extra money.

I had to stay in school before I started travelling overseas.

I love Manchester, but I would like to have a getaway place in Florence.

I'm doing great in England.