Masha Gessen Quotes

If you spend 72 hours in a place you've never been, talking to people whose language you don't speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don't understand, and you come back as the world's biggest know-it-all, you're a reporter. Either that or you're President Obama.

Our leaders increasingly see fit to lecture the ethnic minorities on the need to integrate, including of course the need to speak English. What about the need, though, for Britain to integrate with the rest of the world?

England is very interested as well, and other countries if I could speak the languages!

I have had no contact with the Chinese government. I only work with journalists.

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

I want my words to survive translation. I know when I write a book now I will have to go and spend three days being intensely interrogated by journalists in Denmark or wherever. That fact, I believe, informs the way I write - with those Danish journalists leaning over my shoulder.

I'm always amazed at how much people 'get' when I'm performing overseas. I've never had to change my act on my international shows; I just make sure that I've taken some time to get to know the people in those countries before I perform. That's been really useful.

Whereas with foreign coverage there's a much broader disconnect between you and your audience.

I've been with Life now for seventeen years and I have written several articles for them and will be doing more writing and do at least two assignments a year besides my writing.

I don't really have that much contact with Americans. I mean, I see the oddest things on the Internet, I suppose. And I've got a couple of American friends, but they are Anglophiles anyway because they've decided to come live here.

When I lived in London, I worked at the U.N. for a while as its human rights and refugees officer. I have two degrees, and my second was in radio. I was a programmer and news reporter in Canada. My CV looks bananas.

Our job is to tell the world about Russia and to report world news from a Russian viewpoint.

Jason Rezaian, held for 544 days in Iran, was not a spy but rather a 'Washington Post' journalist whose work aimed to increase cultural understanding between Iran and the world.

Though Mohyeldin's journalistic reputation continues to grow - born in Egypt, raised in Michigan, started as a gofer for NBC News, reared as a producer at CNN, first appeared on-camera for Al Jazeera in 2006 - his is hardly a household name, not in America at least.

It is a conscious decision that I do films in different languages.

I would like to reach out to the global audience; Music is beyond all the culture and language barriers.

The last thing an Englishman wants to hear is a man from Brussels trying to imitate his language - you want to hear a different point of view. You may not be able to understand the details, but you can understand the feeling.

Language should not be a barrier for an actor; I want the world to see my work and not limit it to Hindi-speaking audiences.

I feel an enormous responsibility to bridge the gap between England and America, and be a sort of very quiet ambassador for my country to try to sort of do a "hands across the water" thing where they understand England and English people understand Americans. I adore America.

There's one beneficial effect of going to Moscow. You come home waving the American flag with all your might.

When I tour I'm going to countries to play music for people. My presence in a country is not an endorsement or a condemnation of that country's policies. My presence in a country is an effort to connect with people through playing music.

I'm a huge proponent of exchanges, student exchanges, cultural exchanges, university exchanges. We talk a lot about public diplomacy, .. It's extremely important that we get our message out, but it's also the case that we should not have a monologue with other people. It has to be a conversation, and you can't do that without exchanges and openness.

Say what we may of the inadequacy of translation, yet the work is and will always be one of the weightiest and worthiest undertakings in the general concerns of the world.

If you wake up in Moscow and put on the Science channel, it doesn't feel like an American channel, it feels like their channel. In fact, Discovery is Vladimir Putin's favorite channel.

Keep good relations with the Grecians.