Hisham Matar Quotes

I realized very early in life what my abilities and limitations were, and foreign languages was definitely one of my limitations. With strenuous effort, I just barely passed my French class at Harvard so I could graduate.

My wife has a horror the children will start talking American if we spend too much time out there.

You know it was really hard to do a set, or even to do interviews in English, because in Europe, we always had a translator with us.

While I was doing Hindi, people there laughed at me because I couldn't speak Hindi and English properly.

The fact that I didn't speak English I think was the most difficult thing for me.

I am used to being places where I don't speak the language. What I am not used to is being in a part of a country where few people speak my language. Call it ignorance, arrogance, or what have you, but most places I have visited, I was lucky enough to be able to get by with English.

I remember what it was like when my parents couldn't help me with my homework because they couldn't speak the language, or being a translator for my parents. I did that a lot.

Nothing in my younger life could have told me I would have needed to know how to speak English.

It's very hard having a career in different continents and two different languages.

I was going to be living there and I didn't want to sound like a foreigner all my life.

Well it is sometimes difficult to act in another language.

I came here when I was almost 22. I'm perfectly bilingual, but I'm never going to sound like Sandra Bullock.

I still have an accent. But when I return to Prague, I speak the language yet do not know what they are talking about.

When I was a kid, I resented my grandparents not speaking the perfect English I wanted to speak.

I only saw one English-speaking person all the way across Siberia.

I was born in Santa Monica but brought up abroad so I don't use English much.

I couldn't speak English. I'm in kindergarten, and the only reason I got through to first grade is because I cheated.

If a child cannot speak English the first day at school, that child is not ready to learn.

One of the nice things about the United States is that, wherever you go, people speak the same language. So native New Yorkers can move to San Francisco, Houston, or Milwaukee and still understand and be understood by everyone they meet. Right? Well, not exactly. Or, as a native New Yorker might put it, 'Wrong!'

I am a 10th class pass in Hindi. From 7th grade to 12th grade, I was in Delhi; before that, I was abroad. I came in not knowing a word of Hindi in 7th grade and learned Hindi and passed the exam in 10th. I think I was north of 50 percent, so I feel very proud of that accomplishment.

I went to an English school and was brought up in English. So I don't feel Czech.

I feel it is unnatural and immoral to try to teach science to children in a foreign language They will know facts, but they will miss the spirit.

When I was 10 years old, we moved to Spain with my mother. I learned Spanish before I learned English. But the English language stayed with me.

When I moved to Bombay, it was very harsh. I was nothing like what I am today. I couldn't speak a word of English. In England, people might be very understanding about that, but in Bombay, they're not very forgiving. 'If you don't speak English, how do you expect to work in Hindi films?'

I can speak English on the field but it's difficult with media.