G. Willow Wilson Quotes

Moving abroad brings you on both as a player and a person.

I did not come into contact with any Muslim before I embraced Islam. I read the Qur'an first and realized no person is perfect, Islam is perfect, and if we imitate the conduct of the Holy Prophet... we will be successful.

I spent some time back in Mexico at 16 because my parents thought it would be prudent for me to learn Spanish, because I held a Mexican passport.

I lived in the Muslim world for 10 years.

Right after college, after growing up in the United States, I moved to India, broadly telling the story of how an old and stagnant country was suddenly waking up. And I came home, back to America, in 2009 after telling that story and writing a book about that.

In general, taking soccer out of the picture, as an American living overseas, it's so cool, and I've grown so much. Now I can look at my life from a different perspective.

Moving from Dubai to the Congo was one of the best things that happened to me, it's a shock to be confronted by the contrast in wealth and culture, and it's hard, but I loved it and it influenced me a lot.

As I can testify, living in a foreign country takes you way out of your comfort zone. It's the little things, like ordering food in a different language, buying petrol or learning to drive on the other side of the road, but they all add up to making you a more rounded, educated person.

I got to travel to some pretty awesome places, learn other people's customs, and see what works in their world differently than in ours.

But I studied art in Belgium from the age of 17 to 18, and I learned French when I was there. Very reluctantly so. I didn't do a very good job. For the first six months I was very depressed and couldn't speak to anyone, and then it kinda hits you.

Everything has changed since I came to China.

I was an atheist, I was open-minded, and I began to read in that direction, in the direction of Islam, and everything that I read about it appealed to me.

I just won the gold medal and I couldn't eat downtown. I said, 'Something's wrong.' And from then on, I've been a Muslim.

I had gone to - that was my second time going to the mosque. And then at that time we met [with my wife], she was Muslim and - but was at a point where - because her father is an imam and her mother, though, is a convert, but she was basically raised Muslim. And she was at that point where she was deciding or trying to come to terms with her own relationship with Islam and how to embrace that for herself. So I was sort of trying to come walk toward it.

I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.

In Russia, as I sat there day after day wearing headphones, listening to the interpreter struggle to make our words relevant, I wondered if we could establish meaningful rapport with a nation that had never seen raisins dance in dark glasses on TV...never had a garage sale.

I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind instead of reading about them, . . . that I think there should be a law amongst us to set our young men abroad for a term among the few allies our wars have left us.

Islam cannot accept or agree to a situation which is half-Islam and half-Jahiliyya [separated from God].

The rule for traveling abroad is to take our common sense with us, and leave our prejudices behind.

The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older—intelligence and good manners.

If you move here from somewhere else, I often think if I move to Germany, for example, or if I move China and I go worship there I will understand and I'll be willing to give up a lot of my culture because I'm in somebody else's homeland. So I'm going to have to act German or Chinese, whatever that might mean.

I believe in Islam. I am a Muslim and there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, nothing wrong with the religion of Islam. It just teaches us to believe in Allah as the God.

I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion.

Is there any point in going across the world to eat something or buy something or watch people squatting among their ruins? Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with distance or the exotic. It is almost entirely an inner experience.

The only way to convert a heathen is to travel into the jungle.